


If These Wings Should Fail Me

by narrow_staircases



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Curtain Fic, Depression, Hospitalization, Human Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Permanent Injury, Post-Episode: s05e22 Swan Song, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:44:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4478051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narrow_staircases/pseuds/narrow_staircases
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days, Castiel wonders if he should never have healed Dean at all.</p>
<p>Because now Dean has nothing to wrestle with, no physical pain to nurse, no slowly-mending fractured ribs to remind him that his brother and his sacrifice were real, that Sam Winchester saved the world and that Dean was a part of that fight. He's a blank slate, and it's Castiel's fault. Without pain to ground him, center him, do whatever it is that pain has done for Dean Winchester his entire life, he erodes, steadily and quietly, until Castiel no longer recognizes him, and has no one to blame for his loss but himself.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>In which they stopped the Apocalypse, but Dean is steadily falling apart after losing his brother, and Castiel is doing everything in his power to try to get them back on a path to normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a nearly-finished work in progress--I don't have a specific posting schedule, but you can expect roughly a chapter a week. Thanks to my lovely little sister for a fine beta read!
> 
> The title of this fic comes from a verse that makes an appearance in three different songs—take your pick between “Ain't No Grave,” “Bury My Body,” and “In My Time of Dying.” There are numerous excellent versions of all three (I'm especially partial to Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and The Animals), but the particular version I had in mind here is The Be Good Tanya's cover of “In My Time of Dying.”

 

_Some days, Castiel wonders if he should never have healed Dean at all._

_It sounds awful in his head when he thinks it, but it's the truth. Dean's injuries weren't life-threatening—a badly swollen face, a few broken ribs, bruising on his throat. He would have been in discomfort for a few weeks, but nothing more. Cosmetic injuries, superficial. They hadn't seemed that way in the moment, of course. Castiel doesn't know which was the greater catalyst, the sudden surprise of stumbling back into existence or the grim realization that their plan had gone exactly to plan after all, but either way, standing over Dean in the cemetery he found he couldn't bear the idea of letting his friend carry those reminders._

_It was selfish of him, he understands now. Human grief is something he doesn't yet fully grasp (and Dean Winchester's particular brand of grief, he thinks, is even more deeply masked and layered and complicated than the average human), but it turns out part of the process is supposed to be “working through it.” Meeting the pain head-on, grappling with it, feeling anger, all of it leading (eventually) to acceptance. Peace. But Dean has nothing to wrestle with, no physical pain to nurse, no slowly-mending fractured ribs to remind him that his brother and his sacrifice were real, that Sam Winchester saved the world and that Dean was a part of that fight. Because Castiel stole that from him, and instead he's whole. Blank. As if nothing happened, when, in fact,_ everything _happened._

_Without pain to ground him, center him, do whatever it is that_ pain _has done for Dean Winchester his entire life, he erodes, steadily and quietly, until Castiel no longer recognizes him, and has no one to blame for his loss but himself._

* * *

They leave Bobby at his place, because as soon as they reach the junkyard Dean is insisting they head out again. He doesn't elaborate, just lingers testily by the Impala and refuses to come inside, even to grab a bite before they hit the road. Castiel follows Bobby inside to accept the armful of boxed caramel corn and diet soda the old man offers him as provisions for the drive.

“You stay with him,” Bobby grumbles as he adds a canister of rock salt to Castiel's load. “And for christ's sake make sure he eats something.” He sighs. “I don't suspect he'll be altogether the best company for a while, but he's gonna need someone around. And anyway, you sure as hell ain't stayin' here.” Castiel is startled by the anger in his voice, and Bobby grimaces apologetically. “Sorry kid, but there's a lot of other faces I'd rather be seeing right now than yours.” He nods towards the door, catches the angel's eye as he begins to back away, food and supplies balanced carefully in his arms. “Some of us never asked to be brought back, you know.”

* * *

Bobby's words are still hanging around Castiel's ears forty miles out, bouncing against his skull, begging to be let out into the stifling silence that surrounds him and Dean. He feels sure that he should say something, warn Dean about Bobby's admission—isn't that what people ( _family_ ) do? The phrase _mandatory reporter_ comes to mind, and he brushes it aside; he's not sure where he heard the term, but it seems legal, and Winchesters don't do legality.

Well. The Winchesters who are still alive don't do legality.

So he sits on it, tells himself that the news would upset Dean unduly (it would), and that Bobby would never actually act on a barbed complaint like that (he wouldn't, probably), that he can keep the older man “on his radar” and watch out for him (he doesn't). Really, though, he recognizes that he's doing what he's done all along: playing favorites. Prioritizing. Always, every time, it will be Dean over the world.

He thinks this is a human trait. He hopes it is not a fault.

* * *

Dean drives, and does nothing else. The radio is silent, the snacks Bobby provided are left untouched. Castiel watches him surreptitiously, on guard for any slight tells—white knuckles on the steering wheel, a muscle jumping in his jaw, carefully controlled breathing, something desperate in his eyes. But there's nothing, nothing on the surface at least. Dean has constructed this mask so carefully that Castiel, who had thought he had seen this man already at his lowest and most lost, cannot find any chink in the armor. He is normalcy; he is calm. Unkind and unhappy, but not unstable. And all Castiel knows how to do is to let him drive them further east.

Around eleven that evening, Castiel breaks the silence to gently suggest that they find a hotel for the night. He's expecting an argument, or at the very least stoic refusal, but instead Dean wordlessly pulls off at the next exit. They're somewhere in western Minnesota, and Castiel is not unaware of the fact that they've swung exaggeratedly far north to avoid the barest suggestion of Kansas.

The motel Dean parks at is a local no-name place across the street from a dive bar that looks to still be open on a Tuesday at nearly midnight. Dean doesn't even bother bringing a duffle inside, just tosses the room key to Castiel and takes off in search of a drink. Castiel inspects the room, determines both mattresses miraculously bed-bug free, sickens at the mold in the bathroom grout. The air in the room is sticky with early-summer humidity, but after fiddling with the air conditioning unit for ten minutes, Castiel still can't get it set correctly.

He settles, eventually, on the bed further from the door (not perched at the foot of the bed like he used to, but leaning against the headboard, as he's seen Dean do countless times), flipping through channels and eventually landing on a cooking show where the contestants are required to make a coconut curry dish but none of them are provided with coconut milk, which is evidentially a necessity. Their work is judged, and found wanting. Castiel feels a kinship with them.

Two hours later he finds himself watching a sports competition which he does not understand the rules of, and it strikes him with some surprise how much he wants Dean there to explain the concept of the game to him, or to scoff at his television choices and flip the channel to an old sitcom re-run. He'd known that he wanted Dean _here_ , obviously, because he wants Dean to be okay. He wants him to not drink until he's courting liver failure or seeking out some barroom fight that he's too hammered to win. He wants him to sleep comfortably on an actual mattress, with sheets and a comforter over him, to let Castiel do his best to keep the nightmares at bay.

He wants all those things for Dean because he is Dean, and he ought to be happy and safe and whole. But apparently, Castiel also wants Dean here for selfish reasons. So that Castiel can be with him. And that is something which he had not been aware of.

When Dean finally stumbles into the room not too much longer after that, he doesn't even make eye contact with Castiel, just shuffles to the bed and sprawls across it, snoring quietly in a matter of minutes.

* * *

Dean doesn't dream, and Castiel doesn't care if he gives him hell for digging around in his mind like that. He's not letting it happen.

* * *

The second day is as bad as the first. Dean wakes early, groggy and hungover, spends barely three minutes in the bathroom and then heads to the Impala. Castiel follows, watches as Dean pops the trunk and rummages in his duffle for the bottle of whiskey he keeps tucked away. He takes a swig from it in the parking lot, ignores the disapproving stares even Castiel can feel from an older couple loading their suitcases into their car a few spaces down. Castiel half expects him to keep the bottle with him in the driver's seat and is relieved when he returns it to the duffle instead.

By the time they stop for gas around eleven, Castiel is worried. Dean emerges from the convenience store with a coffee for now and a six-pack for later, but nothing solid. He remembers Bobby's instructions, tries to think of the last time he saw Dean eat anything.

He waits until they've been driving a few minutes before he finds one of the boxes of caramel corn on the backseat, holds it out. “Dean, you need to eat.”

“Not hungry.”

“Hunger isn't relevant, Dean, your body needs fuel to function.”

“Yeah, I'm fine.”

Castiel knows this is a dead end, that anything he says further will be met with a snapped _I said, I'm fine!_ and then stony silence, so instead he opens the cardboard box and takes a handful for himself. He doesn't particularly like eating. His body, this vessel, experiences tastes and textures like normal, and those Castiel finds pleasant. But he's equally aware of the decomposition of the food as he chews, senses the path it takes to his stomach. Digestion is uncomfortable, and he's not surprised humans seem to have no awareness of it.

He's on his third handful when Dean asks tiredly, “Cas, what are you doing?”

“Trying new things,” he answers. “This is not bad. I particularly like the clusters with peanuts.”

Dean rolls his eyes. A couple miles later, he sighs and grabs a handful, and they finish the box between them. Castiel runs his tongue over his teeth, grimaces at the tightness between his molars and the sharp edges his tongue finds. “There are pieces stuck in my teeth,” he announces.

Dean snorts. “Kernels. Happens with popcorn.”

Castiel eyes the box disapprovingly. “Then in that case, I'm not sure it's worth eating,” he decides. “Couldn't they manufacture it without the kernels?”

“I don't fucking know, Cas,” Dean answers, and they don't speak for the rest of the day.

The victory of half-a-box of Crunch-'n'-Munch feels irrelevant when that evening Dean drinks the whole six-pack and most of the remaining whiskey, sitting at the table in their hotel with his back to Castiel.

Castiel wishes he could sleep.

* * *

The following days blur together for a while. They drive, in a generally eastwardly direction, but without any sort of rhyme or reason. One morning they backtrack nearly a hundred miles of highway that they drove the day before in order to merge onto a north-south road to take them down towards Missouri. Castiel doesn't question Dean's navigation, knows there is no destination in mind. He wonders if there isn't a part of Dean that's somehow worried that they'll run out of highway one day and then what, and so they zig-zag their way across the midwest.

Dean eats something every day, caramel corn and other service station snacks, including some absolutely vile beef jerky which Castiel is only barely able to gag down. (Nothing, he thinks, should require so much chewing.) It's carefully calculated, Castiel knows—enough so that Castiel can't yell at him, but no more. He ventures to suggest one afternoon that they might eat an actual meal one day, and to his surprise Dean stops for cheeseburgers. An hour later they stop at a gas station, where Dean claims that he just has to take a leak, but Castiel is fairly certain that he throws up.

Alcohol, on the other hand, Dean has no problem consuming, and the number of empties they leave behind in motels grows daily. He's becoming a sloppier drunk, still surly and mostly close-lipped, but he'll grouse at Castiel from time to time or curse at the television. Once he loses his temper at a leaky faucet in the bathroom and slurs at Castiel to use his mojo to tighten the goddamn jointing.

The drinking worries Castiel, he feels sick seeing Dean so numbed and single-minded, but he knows better than to try to intervene at this point. The last time Dean was drinking this heavily was after Ellen and Jo's deaths, and when Castiel tried then to suggest moderation, Dean threw a bottle at him and swore for eight minutes straight. Castiel hates the drinking, wonders if he could pull a reverse miracle and turn the booze into water without Dean noticing, but he knows it's ridiculous. In the back of his mind, he assumes that one day Dean will simply drink himself into a coma, Castiel will heal him, and Dean will start the whole process over again. It's not a good plan, he knows, but it's functional.

_He's hanging on_ , Castiel thinks, with the grim satisfaction of someone whose expectations have fallen considerably in the recent past.  _We're both hanging on_ .

They never talk, and it's the overwhelming silence that pains Castiel the most. He's used to boredom—he knows how to spend _years_ waiting in patient silence—but he knows that this is unnatural, and each day it becomes harder to bear. People make small talk, he knows, even the Winchesters. Dean might not chatter mindlessly about the weather or sports statistics, but he's ridden in the backseat before while Dean and Sam kept up animated conversations that ranged from films to embarrassing stories from grade school to supplies they'd like to add to the arsenal in the trunk. And Dean is _noisy_ , he's constantly surrounding himself with his music and his fast-talking bravado and _Cas, did I ever tell you about this one chick in Tuscon?_ Silence is a disease, it's something broken in Dean, even more so than the drinking or the loss of appetite, and Castiel has no idea how to fix it.

He wonders what goes on in Dean's head for the ten or more hours they drive in silence each day, if his mind is completely blank or if the nightmare memories that Castiel shields him from each night creep back during the long midday. He doesn't know which would be worse. But Dean's mask stays in place, so there's no way to tell, and they remain stuck in limbo, Castiel praying each day that something will change, ignoring the fact that there's no one left to hear him.


	2. Chapter 2

 

Castiel falls at a Gas-'n'-Sip outside of Toledo.

Dean's in the restroom in back, and Castiel is at the counter buying a few bags of the cheese-filled pretzels which seem to be the item that Dean will eat the most of. He slides the cashier one of their credit cards, and she rings up his purchase. “Weather says a storm's coming across from the lake,” the woman offers, and Castiel nods in agreement. She hands him back the card and gives him a broad smile. “Drive safe now!”

He's at the door when everything shudders, slows imperceptibly, and then locks back into place. He finds himself leaning against the push bar, staring at his feet and breathing heavily. The air feels different around his body, not a quantitative difference, not warmer or colder or thicker, but just— _different_. His knees ache, and there's a ringing at the back of his skull.

“Sir? Hey, sir, are you okay?” The woman at the counter is hurrying towards him, and he turns stiffly. She looks duller than before, and when he looks around him he finds that everything seems slightly out of focus, as if it's lost a dimension.

“Sir?” She touches his shoulder gently, concern written across her face. _I'm fine_ , he starts to say, but then he _isn't,_ there's a horrible clenching across his shoulder blades, a crunching bone-deep tension that lasts for a long second and then releases, and the aftermath is just as terrible. There's a hollow feeling through his chest and a spreading chill, and he knows that on some other plane of existence his wings have crumpled and shredded away.

“I'm fine,” he says finally, and his voice sounds loud in his own ears. “Just dizzy. I'll be fine, my friend is driving,” he assures the woman, and starts moving towards the door, suddenly desperate to be outside. He leans backwards against the push bar and stumbles out onto the pavement, his head pounding. His stomach clenches, and he wonders detachedly if his first act as a human will be to vomit on a sidewalk.

He makes it to the Impala, though, sinks into the passenger seat and closes his eyes. He doesn't know what triggered it, if the Host suddenly cut all ties with Earth now that the apocalypse has been averted, or if he pushed his fading Grace past its limits and it simply gave out on him. Maybe the angels are all still there and someone higher up made the call that Castiel didn't belong in their ranks anymore. He feels as though he could hardly blame them for that; he hasn't thought of his place as being anywhere but with Dean for weeks now, even before everything. But he was still _himself_ , still an angel. And now, he's simply not. The thin barrier between himself and Jimmy Novak's discarded body has dissolved, and now this is his true form, this barely-six-foot figure with the beginnings of arthritis in his left hand. _Holy tax accountant,_ Castiel thinks bitterly.

He jumps when the driver's door opens, and Dean gives him a funny look as he slides behind the wheel. He doesn't say anything, though, just turns the key in the ignition and shifts into reverse, and Castiel realizes he doesn't know what to say himself, so he lets the silence hang between them and stares out the window at the gathering storm clouds, trying to numb himself from the fact that he feels as though he has lost a limb.

* * *

They end up in central Ohio by the time night falls, and find a room at an Econo Lodge. There's a bar across the street, and Dean's no sooner dumped his duffle on the bed than he's grabbing his wallet and headed to the door. Castiel's gut twists as he realizes that he can't just stand by anymore while Dean drinks himself to death: he won't be able to bring him back when he tips too far over the edge.

He sighs, because there's no good way to do this. “Dean, where are you going?”

Dean turns, looks genuinely baffled. “Drinking.”

Castiel is thankful at least that he's been favored with an honest response. “Don't you think you might, um, take a night off at some point?”

“I wasn't planning on it, no.”

He thinks the only reason Dean hasn't flipped out at him yet is that he's still too surprised at Castiel's apropos-of-nothing interrogation. He presses on, figures he might as well use this window as long as it's open. “I don't want you to put yourself in danger, and if you keep drinking in these kind of amounts—”

“Cas, lay off and mind your own fucking business.” Window closed, then. Dean's voice is strained, as if he too knows that their live-and-let-live truce is at a breaking point, as if he would beg Castiel to not make this harder than it has to be, if he would let himself beg. “I'm doing what I'm doing and that's how it is,” he says as he opens the door; then, tossed over his shoulder like an afterthought: “Don't wait up.”

Castiel stares at the door for several long minutes after it slams shut, the irony of Dean's parting jab tugging persistently at his chest. The words have claws, and they won't let him go. He sits, breathing loudly as the loss and fear and finally anger boil up in him, until the walls of the hotel room feel like they're closing in on him, and he needs to _move,_ do something. He paces for a long while, tries to calm himself down, steady his breathing like he's seen Dean and Sam and Bobby all tell each other to do countless times. It's not working, though, he thinks maybe it would if it were Dean here telling him to _just focus on in and out, that's it, deep breaths Cas, I've got you_ and he sees red, grabs blindly at the bedside table and hurls something at the wall with a yell. He realizes as it's leaving his hand that it's a Gideon Bible, and he laughs sourly, because he supposes it's fitting. Heaven threw him out. He's just returning the favor. “It's mostly lies anyway,” he mutters.

His legs give way suddenly, and he sits down heavily on the bed, buries his face in his hands. He's just so tired, _bone_ tired, and for the first time in his life. He doesn't know how long he sits like that—he might even doze off a little bit, but he doesn't really know what that feels like so he's not sure. Eventually, though, he needs to pee (or at least, he's pretty sure he does), and he stands unsteadily and shuffles to the bathroom.

He turns the tap in the shower almost absentmindedly once he's finished relieving himself, as if he's in some kind of a trance. Standing under the hot spray, the steam and the water pressure soothing his tight muscles, tracing a path over the invisible wounds across his back, he feels the first moment of anything close to relief that he's felt since he fell. Something almost like comfort. And it brings everything welling up in him, the panic and the grief and the gut-wrenching loneliness, and Castiel leans against the tile wall and buries his head in his arms and cries, wracking sobs that shake his whole body. Because he's human enough now to be hurt, and he feels so horribly abandoned: by God, by the rest of the Host, but most of all by the man who he fell for, who he would give anything for, who's sitting across the street doing tequila shots, utterly oblivious.

Castiel cries until the water turns tepid and then cold. Then he towels off, puts back on his fading suit, and crawls into bed.

* * *

He can't place, at first, the noise that wakes him. His brain feels like it's floating, and sounds are having a difficult time reaching his ears. Then Dean screams, and Castiel is awake and scrambling out of the bed before he knows what he's doing.

Dean is twisting on the opposite bed, his hands clenching at the bedspread, his head turned away from Castiel as though he's trying to burrow face-first into the mattress. There's dim light in the room coming from outside—Castiel isn't sure if it's from streetlights or if the sun is already beginning to rise—and by it he can see that Dean is drenched in sweat, his hair clinging to the back of his neck. He realizes with a sickened feeling that the dreams must have begun a while ago, and that he was sleeping too heavily to notice, at least not until things got really ugly.

Dean cries out again, a long, desperate sound that morphs into a string of _nopleasenononopleaseplease_. Castiel hovers, unsure whether to touch; he calls Dean's name a few times but it doesn't draw him out from whatever horror he's reliving. Castiel takes a steadying breath and puts his hand on Dean's leg, shakes him once gently, then again, harder.

The response is instantaneous. Dean rockets forward off the mattress with sudden, deadly force, sending Castiel sprawling backwards to the other bed. His breathing is frantic, but his hands are steadier than Castiel would have expected, and he realizes that he should have remembered that Dean Winchester sleeps with a knife under his pillow. Castiel finds himself thinking about the moment they met, knows that this time if Dean plunges the knife hilt-deep in his chest, it'll work.

He keeps his distance, reaches for the pillow at the head of his bed for something to keep between himself and the knife. Dean's head darts to follow the motion, and Castiel slows his movements as much as he dares. “Dean?” he tries again, his voice softer this time. “Dean, it's me, it's Castiel. You're having a nightmare.”

Dean just stares, his eyes fixed on some point over Castiel's shoulder. Castiel doesn't know what he's seeing, Sam caught in the Cage with Lucifer, or some more familiar fear—hellhounds, Alistair, some nameless soul torn apart by his own hands—but whatever it is, it's not terror that he sees play across Dean's face now, it's rage, and barely controlled. His hand closes around the pillow and he starts pulling it inchingly slowly towards himself, heart pounding. Dean catches the movement this time, and he lunges forward. Castiel yelps and barely manages to keep his grip on the pillow, holding it in front of himself with trembling arms as he stumbles up from the bed and tries to back toward the door. “ _Fuckin' . . . stay out of my way!”_ Dean growls, stalking after Castiel and swinging the knife in windmilling arcs. He's clumsy, as if his depth perception is off or he's distracted by a few dozen other imagined assailants, and Castiel knows that this is the only reason he's still alive.

The door is suddenly at his back, and Dean is still advancing. Castiel scrambles at the lock, frantic, but the deadbolt is stubborn under his fingers, and he knows he's not going to make it in time. He ducks to the right as Dean brings the knife down (there's killing power behind his stroke even if his targeting is wobbly), hears Dean roar in anger as he scrambles towards the bathroom. His fingers are on the door jamb when Dean grabs his shoulder and pulls him back around. Castiel's legs give out and he sinks to the floor, his back to the wall and Dean towering over him. His heart is beating so hard his jaw is vibrating, and he thinks _please god no, this will kill him._

Something clears in Dean's eyes, and he shakes his head as if there's water in his ears. “Cas?” he asks, puzzled, and Castiel could cry with relief, but then Dean is on his knees in front of him, grabbing at his arms and shaking him. “Cas, what the fuck, you're not supposed to be here!”

“Dean, it's fine, you're fine,” Castiel tries to reassure him, but Dean is insistent, frantic, his words tumbling over each other as his grip on Castiel's shoulders tightens. “You can't be here,” he repeats, “Cas, you can't fucking be here, please go, _please_ Cas, go find Sammy, you have to go get Sammy—” and he keeps saying it, keeps  begging him to do _something_ , until Castiel can't bear it anymore. He wrenches out of Dean's weakening grasp and crawls the two feet into the bathroom, slams the door behind himself and collapses against it. He pulls his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around his head, trying to muffle the sound of Dean sobbing on the other side of the door, pleading with Castiel to rescue his baby brother, begging until his voice is cracked and ruined. Castiel can feel his own breathing shaky with tears, and he doesn't think he'll ever feel more helpless, more _worthless_ than he does in this moment.

* * *

He thought he wouldn't sleep, but as it turns out he comes awake lying on the tacky linoleum floor. He sits up slowly, groaning at the stiffness in his shoulders and knees and his hip. _This body is dying_ , he thinks to himself, and he knows it's melodramatic (Jimmy Novak would have been thirty-seven in October), but he can't shake the feeling that this finite, ridiculously young body is somehow older than the ageless creature he used to be. He wonders if this is how he will feel every morning for the rest of his life, wonders if it's worth it.

Castiel's stomach turns over as he remembers exactly why he spent the night on the bathroom floor. He can hear soft noises from the room, and realizes with some relief that whatever worst-case-scenario he hasn't let himself fully think through hasn't happened. He cracks the door open, and Dean is sitting at the end of the bed, lacing up his boots. He throws Castiel a funny look. “I know you're not people, man, but you've got some weird habits,” he mutters.

_Actually, Dean, turns out I am people after all._ Castiel can hear himself saying it, opens his mouth even, but instead what comes out is a hesitant, “Are you all right?”

Dean snorts. “Well I'm not the one who was camped out by the fucking toilet all night, so yeah, Cas, I'm fine.” His face seems whiter than usual, though, and as he's talking Castiel's gaze drifts to the trash can by the door where a whiskey bottle that still had two or three fingers in it yesterday now sits empty. There's no slur in Dean's speech, though, no weave in his step as he stands and swipes the car keys off the bedside table. Just a sort of glassy desperation in his eyes, and Castiel knows that in the next few days the drinking is going to get steadily worse and worse. Wonders, and it won't be for the last time, how much of what happened last night was a nightmare and how much was a very lucid Dean, finally honest for the first time in weeks.

* * *

The drinking does, of course, get worse. It's day drinking now, and Dean's hardly even trying to hide it. He'll be half-heartedly cagey about some of it, sneaking hits from a flask while checking the tire pressure or walking to the convenience store to pay for their gas. Other times, though, he'll break open a case of beer ostensibly bought for that evening and shamelessly polish off a bottle while he munches distractedly on snack food. Castiel tries to comment on it once, but Dean just waggles the empty bottle at him and mutters, “calories,” before he chucks it in the recycling. He won't actually drink _while_ he drives, Castiel thinks he has too much instinctual respect for his car to take that step, but he will drink-and-then-immediately-start-the-engine, and Castiel isn't too sure that the technicality carries much weight anymore.

He knows that Dean is drinking more because he thinks it will push the nightmares back. He knows this, because Dean tells him one night. It's the fourth night since he fell, Castiel thinks. Dean had been drunk already when he left the hotel that evening, and when he stumbles back from the bar around one in the morning he's maudlin drunk. He sprawls face-first on the bed, fully-clothed and boneless. Castiel watches him wordlessly from the other bed, equal parts pity and regret and disgust. Dean turns his head, catches Castiel's eye, and his face crumples. “Don' wanna sleep, Cas,” he slurs. “Can't— _fuck_ , I can't get drunk 'nough anymore.” He pushes himself up on one elbow, rubs at the tears gathering in his eyes. “'s all comin' in now, every damn night, and I don' know, I think I built up a fuckin' immunity or somethin'.” He grabs at the pillow, hugs it to himself. “What am I gonna do, Cas?” he whispers. “What am I gonna do? What'm I gonna do…” He keeps repeating it under his breath like a litany, each repetition more slurred than the next, until the tension finally leaves his shoulders and he finally nods off.

Castiel waits until Dean's breathing becomes deep and regular. Then he gets out of bed, removes the knife from under Dean's pillow and places it under his own instead. He feels, to borrow from Dean's vocabulary, like a dick, just sitting there and saying nothing to comfort or reassure his friend. But he doesn't have any answers.

* * *

When they stop driving two days later, it's because Castiel finally gives Dean an ultimatum.

It's a quarter past ten in the morning when Dean emerges bleary-eyed from the motel bathroom, water droplets still clinging to his greenish-tinged face. He's been sleeping later and later, Castiel's noticed, although with no schedule or plans it's difficult for him to find fault with their late starts each day. It's one or two less excruciatingly silent hours in the car to live through.

Castiel is sitting at the table by the window, hands clutched together in front of him. Dean ignores him, grabs for the whiskey bottle in his duffle to numb his hangover, when Castiel coughs. “Dean, stop a minute.”

Dean turns and cocks an eyebrow at Castiel, cap already half-unscrewed. Castiel holds up the car keys and jangles them in his direction. “You can drink, Dean, or you can drive. You can't do both.”

For a moment, Dean looks indignant, and Castiel expects him to argue with him. _Hopes_ that he'll yell at him, at least put up a fuss. After a beat, though, Dean just shrugs, finishes unscrewing the bottle cap and takes a long swallow. He settles down on the bed, crosses his arms over his chest, and says nothing.

“Okay,” Castiel says slowly. “Okay.” A few awkward minutes pass in silence as he tries to think of what to say next. Eventually he stands and says, “I'm going out,” and then, “I'll be back in a few hours,” even though Dean never says that last part. He pockets the keys as he walks to the door, hoping Dean doesn't notice; if he does, he doesn't comment on it. Castiel wishes he had enough faith to leave them sitting on the table, but his faith has taken a steady beating over the past few months, and he can't bring himself to do it.

Outside, he wanders until he finds the library. It's a small red building that looks like it used to be a home or maybe a one-room schoolhouse, like the sort he's seen on old-fashioned greeting cards around Christmas. Inside, a tiny woman with thin, graying brown hair and an owlish pair of glasses glances at him from behind a cluttered desk. Castiel ducks his head and makes his way to the large table in the farthest corner of the room.

There's a box of stubby pencils and a few stacks of old catalogue record cards in the center of the table, which Castiel helps himself to. He takes a steadying breath, writes _To Do_ at the top of one of the cards in careful script, and then just stares at the cards. He's been human for barely a week, he has no idea what he's doing. They need jobs, a place to live, food and clothes and a _real_ bank account and kitchen utensils and bedding and eventually medical insurance, and Dean's probably never had car insurance for the Impala but he probably should, right? And he knows you need all kinds of paperwork to get a job or an apartment, things like background checks and credit scores and social security numbers. There's a messy bundle of fake IDs and credit cards in the glove compartment, but he doesn't think any of those will be sufficient. Castiel wonders if they could call Bobby for help, but remembers the last thing the old man said to him and abandons that plan. Maybe if he could convince Dean to call, but he knows without asking that it's a lost cause. _Fuck you, Dean Winchester,_ he thinks, shocked by the sudden intensity of his anger, but he feels like he's drowning. _I can't do all this on my own, I need you_.

His breathing is shaky, and he knows his choices are to either buckle down and come up with a plan, or start crying in a public library. He knows which one Dean would tell him to do, and as much as he thinks he hates the man right now, he doesn't have any other guidance to go on here, so he tightens his grip on the golf pencil and starts writing.

Two hours later, he has three different lists on a thick handful of cards. The first is immediate tasks: _find an employment agency. Look for an apartment. Immediate spending money (can Dean hustle pool?). Buy groceries._ _Do laundry_ _._ The second list is the longest and most revised, an attempt to figure out what kind of a budget they're going to need. He knows it's essentially worthless, since he has no idea how much anything costs or what he might be able to make at a job, and while he thought it might help to try to put things down on paper, instead it's just frustrated him more. He pushes those cards aside; he'll drop them in the trash when he leaves.

The third list is just one card, which he folds carefully and places in his coat pocket. It's even more impossible than the first, but he wrote it anyway, because even if his faith is all but gone, he can always pretend that there's still enough to hold onto.

_Convince Dean to quit drinking._

_Find a way to stop the nightmares._

_Learn a hobby._

_Celebrate Thanksgiving together._

There's more, but he didn't know how to put it into words so he left it off the card, but it's still in the back of his mind, tucked away for whenever it becomes relevant. Assuming he should ever be so lucky.

* * *

“I'm getting a job,” Castiel announces when he returns to the motel. Dean is still sitting where he left him, the scene unchanged apart from a slightly emptier whiskey bottle and the Weather Channel playing silently on the TV.

“Okay?”

“We need the money,” Castiel says, setting down the bag of groceries he bought on his walk back from the library. “We also should do laundry, there's a laundromat three blocks away.”

“Cas, we don't need money, we've got plenty of credit cards.”

“If we're not moving around every night, I'm not sure it's wise to keep using the same fraudulent credit card in one place,” Castiel answers. “Besides,” he adds, “I don't want to stay in this hotel forever, Dean.”

“Well if you would give me my fucking keys back—”

“So yes, I'm getting a job,” Castiel says firmly. “And we're getting an apartment.”

Dean balks. “You want us to get a fucking _apartment?_ ” he splutters.

“Do you have a different idea?” Castiel asks, the anger he felt earlier surging up again. “Tell me, Dean Winchester, what exactly is your plan for the future?”

Dean freezes, and Castiel watches as his face blanks over, his jaw clenched. “Fuck you, Castiel,” he mutters.

Castiel feels the fight drain out of him, even as part of him is still insisting _don't let up on him, he's being an asshole and he's going to spiral completely out of control_. “Dean, I'm not trying to—I just think we need some kind of a plan,” he tries. “I'm just trying to help.”

Dean snorts, and gets off the bed, his movements sharp and too fast. He stalks to the door, catching Castiel's glance as he passes him. “Then don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to,” he growls, and slams the door behind him.


	3. Chapter 3

 

They were at a Motel 6 outside of Pittsburgh when Castiel laid down the law, and so Pittsburgh is where they end up staying. Castiel discovers quickly that no one is hiring within walking distance of the motel, at least no one who will accept zero job experience and isn't too particular about paperwork. So Castiel starts taking the bus into the city to look for work. He thought he'd be methodical about it, had marked out on a map a step-by-step progression through the city, but then public transit turned out to be unexpectedly confusing and he missed his stop. So instead he ends up wandering through what is apparently a more upscale part of town where men in suits get lunch from busy cafes while talking on tiny cell phones plugged into their ears. Castiel walks into every restaurant and corner shop he finds, and is turned away from every one.

For two weeks his schedule is the same: catch the earliest bus into the city, ask for work until it's nearing sunset, take the bus back to the motel. He eats granola bars for lunch, and learns to carry a water bottle with him after he nearly passes out one day from dehydration. They switch motels after a week so that they can use a new credit card, but besides that nothing changes. Castiel has no idea what Dean does during the days. If he was idealistic, he'd like to think that Dean maybe goes on walks, visits the library, has lunch at the old-timey diner across the street from the new motel. He'd like to imagine Dean doing all those things. As it is, he knows he'd be lucky if Dean spends most of each day sleeping, since then at least he can't drink. (Probably. Leave it to Dean Winchester to develop a sleepwalking problem in order to further enable his drinking problem.)

At nights, he knows, Dean drinks at the bars along the strip, or in the motel room, or both. He's come home to empties in the kitchenette, a faint smell of vomit in the bathroom, the door left slightly ajar. And so that becomes routine, too: he locks the door, checks to see that Dean is still breathing, turns on the fan in the bathroom, rinses out the bottles in the sink so he can take them to the grocery store on his way to the bus stop in the morning for the nickel exchange. Dean supplies one day's bus fare in one week with his habit. _Way to pull your weight_ , Castiel thinks sourly, while the other half of his brain thinks _thank god he's still breathing tonight_.

One time he comes home and the door is uncharacteristically closed, locked and everything. He's digging in his pockets for his key when he hears a woman's voice from the other side of the door, and then the grunts and moans and a steady thumping. He backs away slowly, heat rising on the back of his neck and creeping over his ears. His eyes are stinging, and he rubs at them angrily, swallows the lump in the back of his throat. He feels like an idiot. His feet take him down the street without any conscious effort on his part, and by the time he comes back to himself enough to be aware of his surroundings, he's inside a brightly-light Walmart, pacing up and down the bathroom accessories aisle.

He buys a three-pack of boxers and a cheap t-shirt. Then he doubles back a few blocks to the twenty-four hour laundromat, changes in the bathroom, and puts his clothes into the washing machine. He sinks into an orange plastic chair, draws his feet up underneath him and drops his head into his folded arms. _What were you expecting, anyway?_ he berates himself. _You really think he thinks about you that way, at all?_

Castiel's not stupid. Yes, it's taken him months to understand social cues and body language and he still finds himself slow to catch sarcasm or innuendo, but he knows emotions. He understands attraction. And he knows exactly what he feels for Dean, knows in no uncertain terms what he wants to do with him. To him. In the same way that he's always known that that was a one-way street. Besides, they were too busy trying to save the world, and then when the world was saved he was too busy trying to tie the broken pieces back together and keep everything from blowing away.

_And yet…_ the stupid voice in the back of his head is nudging at him, and Castiel tries to shut it out but it's insistent.  _You know there's more to it than that_ , the voice prods.  _You know there were moments when he felt that too, when something could have happened, but you're too much of a coward to admit it, because it's easier to imagine that it was always only just in your head. Because it's too late now_ , and Castiel knows it is, knows it's too late, too  _fucking_ late—

“Hey buddy!” Castiel sits up fast, his head swimming. An older man is standing in front of him, wearing a battered trucker's hat and looking like he hasn't showered in months. “You got an extra quarter? I'm short for this load.”

“Um, no, I'm sorry,” Castiel answers.

“How 'bout a cigarette, then?” Castiel shakes his head. “Eh, fuck you, buddy,” the man mutters without much malice, and shuffles over to the other side of the laundromat, ducking his head down to look for dropped change beneath the dryers. Castiel curls into a tighter ball on the uncomfortable chair and tries not to wish for anything.

* * *

It's a quarter past eleven on a muggy Tuesday morning, and Castiel is standing in front of another nondescript diner, the white-and-red striped awning faded to something more like pink and gray. The name _Kowalski's_ is curved across the glass door in gold-edged letters, with a hand-printed sign beneath listing the hours and stating that patrons will be turned away for lack of appropriate attire. Castiel frowns at the door, trying to remember whether or not he's been to this particular restaurant yet. He'd had that experience the day before, walked into a drug store which, it turned out, he'd visited the previous weekend, with the added misfortune of finding the same cashier behind the counter. She had asked him, not entirely jokingly, if he was some kind of a stalker, and Castiel had hastily backed out of the store before she could make good on her threats to call the manager. He's pretty sure this place is new, though— _not that it makes any difference_ , he thinks as he pushes the door open. Being human, it turns out, has made him extremely cynical.

The air inside the shop is just as humid as outside, with the added element of the salty odor of cured meat. There's a refrigerator case full of deli meats, sausages, pre-made salads, and slightly damp looking pastries, and a cluster of tables to Castiel's right. Behind the counter a window opens up into a steam-filled kitchen, which seems unnecessarily loud in comparison to the one customer sitting at the counter along the window, nursing a cup of black coffee over the morning newspaper.

Castiel approaches the young woman at the cash register, rattles off his now-perfected spiel. “Hello, I'm looking for employment and I was wondering if you might have any positions available.” He's starting to feel robotic, having repeated the same phrase over and over for the better part of two weeks.

The woman behind the counter bites her lip. “Um, I'm not sure, and I don't know if right now is the best time to ask—”

“Katy!” A voice bellows from the kitchen, and the woman jumps a little as the door swings open. A short woman in her late fifties, skinny but with arms that look like they could snap a broom handle in half without any effort, pushes into the room. “Katy, call your sister and tell her to get her ass here by noon. Your shitbag cousin got himself arrested and now I'm short for the lunch rush.” She notices Castiel and fixes him with an impatient glare. “You want something, you order it from the case, kitchen's not open for another ten minutes.”

Castiel bobs his head, then starts to stutter as his brain catches up with the woman's words, “Actually, um, no, I was looking for a job?”

“Seriously?” The woman rolls her eyes at the ceiling. “Sweet Jesus, finally you send me an angel and this is what I get?”

Castiel chokes.

The woman doesn't seem to notice. “You want to wash dishes, then?” she asks. “You'd start right now, I can pay you seven dollars an hour. You don't screw up today, you can fucking have Mark's job, I don't care if that kid's family, he's done here.” Castiel is staring at her, overwhelmed by how quickly everything is happening. “Well?”

“Um, yes. Yes,” he says again, more firmly, remembering that he's trying to make a good impression, “I would be very grateful to work for you.”

The woman snorts. “Grateful, huh? Well I hope you're still grateful when your hands get all swollen up twice their size.” She sticks out her hand, and it takes Castiel a moment to realize that she's expecting a handshake, rather than illustrating her dire-sounding warning. “Katherine,” she says. “And you are?”

“Um—Cas,” he stutters, reaching for her hand. “Cas Novak.”

“Okay, Novak,” Katherine says, shaking his hand firmly. “Now get back here and we'll find you an apron. Jackie!” she yells as they head back through the swinging door. “Jackie, you finish your damn smoke break and come teach Novak how to use the dishwasher. We're gonna be in the weeds in twenty minutes!”

“Jackie” is a stocky man in his thirties, who gruffly instructs Castiel to call him Jack instead and shows him how to operate the industrial dishwasher as if it's the least interesting thing humanity has ever invented. And then orders start to come in, and suddenly Castiel's up to his elbows in plates and bowls and red plastic cups. By the time the lunch rush slows, his shoulders are tight, his hands are red and puffy, and the front of his pants is still damp from when he sloshed dishwater on himself. Jack goes on another smoke break during the downtime, while Castiel tries to memorize where everything is shelved in the kitchen.

By the time the last dishes are washed and put away, it's pushing ten o'clock. Castiel is exhausted in a way he didn't even know was possible. His eyes are shuttering closed despite the fact that he's constantly moving, and his feet are twin masses of numbness. It seems to have been worth it, though, because Katherine looks him over and nods approvingly. “Job's yours if you want it,” she says. “Be here by ten am tomorrow.”

“I will,” Castiel agrees. “And every day after that, or…?” He's nervous for some reason, as if all of this will melt away if he asks the wrong question.

“Sundays we're closed,” Katherine replies. “And Saturdays we close after lunch, so you'd be done by four, but other than that, yes.” She fixes Castiel with a sharp look. “Be on time, and don't come to work high. If you can manage that, we won't have any problems.”

“I can do that,” Castiel answers. He's already doing the math in his head. Five twelve-hour days a week plus six hours for Saturdays, at seven dollars an hour… that's almost five hundred dollars a week. He takes in a shaky breath. This will work. This will actually work.

His relief must show in his face, because Katherine's gaze softens minutely. “You needed a break, huh, Novak?”

“Very much so.”

“Just moved to the area?”

Castiel nods. “Two weeks ago, yes. A little more than that.”

“You find a place yet?” Katherine asks.

“No.”

She studies him for a moment, then pulls a notepad out of her pocket. She scribbles down a name and a number and hands it to Castiel. “A friend of mine runs a building six or seven blocks away. It's sure as hell not fancy, but you should be able to afford it. You tell him I sent you.”

Castiel blinks hard and takes the paper. “Th-thank you,” he stutters. “I don't—you don't know me at all,” he says finally, hoping she understands what he's trying to say.

“I'm a good judge of character,” Katherine quips, then rolls her eyes. “No, I'm not. But you were in the right place at the right time, and you pulled your weight today, I figure it's no skin off my back to point you in the way of some cheap housing.” She waves him towards the door. “Now go home and sleep, you're going to feel like shit tomorrow morning.”

* * *

It's nearly midnight by the time Castiel stumbles back to the motel. He'd missed the bus back by a frustrating three minutes and had to wait forty-five minutes for the next one to arrive. Dean is asleep already, passed out across the bed. Castiel goes through his routine mindlessly—checks to see that Dean is still breathing, slides the knife carefully out from underneath his pillow—and then collapses on his own bed, too exhausted to do anything but kick off his shoes.

* * *

Three hours later he's awake, holding Dean by the wrists to keep him from clawing his own skin off.

* * *

In the morning, he _does_ feel like shit, barely drags himself to the shower. Dean's still asleep by the time he's dressed and eaten two bowls of cereal. He's starving, realizes that he barely ate yesterday, just the granola bar he had between the lunch and dinner rushes. He'll need to go to the grocery store after he gets off work tonight, buy a loaf of bread and some peanut butter so that he can pack a sandwich for lunch.

_After he gets off work_ . The phrase makes Castiel grin, and he realizes that, for the first time since he fell, he's actually proud. Of something he's done. He wonders what anyone who knew him a year ago would think of him now, remembers that everyone who's ever known him is either dead, hates him, or is perpetually in a drunken stupor. His mood sours considerably, and he pours himself a third bowl of cereal.

Dean's still not awake by the time he needs to catch the bus into the city, so he leaves him a note. It feels easier than explaining things in person anyway:

_I found a job in the city. I also have a number to call for an apartment, I don't know yet how much it will cost but I think we should be able to afford it._

He feels like he should write something more, the note seems too short, businesslike almost. But there's not really anything else to say. After a brief hesitation, he signs  _Cas_ at the bottom of the paper.

When he gets home that evening, there's an envelope sitting on the table with the words _for rent_ scribbled on it in sloppy letters. Inside is nearly $300 in tens and twenties. Castiel feels bad that his first reaction is surprise that Dean's actually been sober enough to hustle.


	4. Chapter 4

 

Two weeks later, they move into a narrow, six-story brick building in what Dean eloquently describes as a “sketch-ass” neighborhood. It's a one-bedroom, which will raise eyebrows, but it's the cheaper option by a significant margin; and besides, as far as Dean knows, Castiel doesn't need a bedroom.

It takes them all of ten minutes Sunday morning to pack up the Impala, as their possessions are still pretty much limited to clothes and some groceries. Dean is energetic, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and humming along with the tape he popped in the deck. He's missed the car, Castiel knows he has, and not for the first time he feels guilty for grounding Dean so thoroughly—for the past few weeks in the same hotels, and now more permanently with this job and the apartment. But it's not like Dean had to treat his word as law. True, he's been holding onto the keys to the Impala until this morning, but there is no doubt in Castiel's mind that if Dean had wanted to take them back, he would have done so. _Besides_ , the cynical voice in the back of his head whispers, _he's still alive and the Impala's all in one piece._ And okay, when he thinks of it in those terms, _yes_ it was worth it.

Castiel counts the exit signs as they pass by, feeling content, almost happy for the first time in ages. This is the longest he and Dean have been in each others' company since he started looking for work, and he realizes how little he knows of how Dean spends his days. The drinking, obviously (he knows Dean slipped a few swallows of whiskey this morning before they set out, but he decided to let it slide—he knows well enough by now that he's just “clearing his brain” from a hangover fog), hustling, and the occasional one-night stand, but beyond that? He sneaks a look at Dean out of the corner of his eye and realizes, with pleasant surprise, that he doesn't look like someone who's been sitting on a motel bed watching pay-per-view TV and drinking beer every afternoon for a month. He's still somewhat worse for wear—he's lost weight, and the lack of sleep is written across his face in the paleness in his cheeks and the haunted look in his eyes. But he's shaved at some point in the past few days, and Castiel's pretty sure he's built up more muscles in his arms. Because he's spent enough time studying Dean's arms to be able to spot the difference. Castiel can feel heat rising on his neck, and he goes back to staring out the window before Dean can glance his way and catch the flush across his face and the stutter in his breath.

One missed exit and a considerable amount of swearing later, Dean's executing a proficient but messy parking job on a side street next to the apartment building. He casts a wary glance at the iron bars across the shop windows and doors, and the gaggle of thug-ish looking young men gathered on a corner, smoking and yelling at passing cars. “Jesus, Cas, you got a death wish?” he mutters.

Castiel's heart falls slightly. He'd stupidly hoped that Dean would be excited about the new place, impressed by Castiel's work, but now that they're both really here he's realizing how very questionable the neighborhood is. “We can't afford a better area,” he answers.

“Yeah, I know, I know.” Dean sighs and opens his door. “Just, y'know . . . don't be dumb, Cas. Stay aware of your surroundings, shit like that.”

Castiel can picture himself reaching out, grabbing Dean's arm, saying something cheesy like  _Dean, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were worried about me_ . But he does know better, so he gets out his side of the car and goes to help get the duffles out of the trunk.

Their apartment is on the fourth floor, overlooking the alley behind the building. Castiel wanted to take the elevator, but the creaking and shuddering when he called the car down were so loud that Dean blanched and muttered “no fucking way” under his breath, heading for the stairwell instead.

When they step inside the apartment for the first time, they're both silent for a long minute. Castiel had known, obviously, that the apartment was unfurnished (with the exception of a battered couch left over from the previous tenants which the landlord agreed to let them have), but he hadn't been expecting it to look so barren. There's a kitchenette in the corner of the living area, with a long countertop separating it from the rest of the room. The couch along the far wall is a sort of brown corduroy with a long tear down one arm. Besides that, the room is empty.  _But it's ours_ , Castiel thinks with a sort of swell of pride, and he can't keep the smile off his face.

Dean notices and almost half-way grins at Castiel in response. “It's just an apartment, Cas,” he grouses, and dumps the duffles he's carrying in a corner. He crosses over to the bathroom, pokes his head inside and gags. “Fuck, we're gonna need to bleach this shit.”

Castiel is inspecting the tiny oven, which has also seen cleaner days. He follows Dean into the bathroom ( and it is, indeed, disgusting), which adjoins by another door to the bedroom.  By the looks of it, it'll be just barely big enough for a full-sized bed, and there's a stain on the carpet which Castiel hopes is water damage, but it's serviceable. Dean catches Castiel's eye and shrugs. “We've stayed in worse,” he says, which is true, but skirts over what Castiel feels is the proverbial elephant in the room: that they've never really  _stayed_ before.

“Dean, I hope this is okay,” he blurts out. “The apartment, I mean—the whole thing.” He gestures vaguely with his arms. “Not living in motels anymore, I hope…” He trails off, uncertain of what he wants to say.  _I don't want this to be weird. I want to kiss you until you're dizzy._

“Cas, it's fine,” Dean answers, a little too quickly. “It's fine, it's, uh, gonna be cheaper than motels anyway.” He looks uncomfortable all of a sudden, and pushes past Castiel into the living room. Castiel hangs back for a moment, trying to decide whether or not he imagined the flush in Dean's cheeks. He heads into the other room just in time to see Dean tuck a flask back into his jacket. “I'll get the rest of the shit from the car,” he says, and leaves without looking at Castiel.

Castiel starts a list while he's gone, and by the time Dean gets back it's got a frightening number of items on it. Dean puts the beer and a half-drunk carton of milk into the fridge, grimacing at the mold on the door shelves, and dumps the rest of the groceries unceremoniously on the counter. He nudges Castiel's paper. “What're you working on?”

“Shopping list,” Castiel answers.

“Shit, really?”

“Dean, we don't own a shower curtain. Or pillows. Or a trash can,” he adds, and scribbles that down at the end of his list. He gives Dean a serious look. “I'm afraid we need to go to Walmart.”

Dean drags a hand down his face. “Fuck.”

* * *

It's not as distasteful an ordeal as Dean makes it out to be. It's satisfying, actually, Castiel thinks, collecting bits and pieces of something resembling a regular human life—the only part of his life right now that seems within his control. Dean drags his feet and complains about half the things on the shelves (“ _What the fuck is 'memory foam,' Cas?_ ”), even though they're only buying the most basic necessities. Neither of them, it turns out, have any concept of how much things cost, a realization which Dean shrugs off because “we'll just put it on a credit card, Cas, I don't get why this is even a thing.” He's getting more and more antsy the longer they shop, rubbing the back of his neck and tapping his fingers on every shelf. Castiel is fairly certain the constant motion is meant to cover up the tremors running through his arms. He grits his teeth and begrudges yes, they'll use the card, even though he wanted to do this _right_.

Dean snaps in the parking lot, yells at Castiel when he accidentally knocks the cart into Baby while trying to maneuver it between the closely-parked cars. He sits in the driver's seat while Castiel loads the last of the bags into the back seat, and by the time he's back from stowing the cart in the corral Dean's hands aren't shaking as much, and there's a faint stain of red across his cheekbones and whiskey on his breath.

They drive home ( _home_ ) without speaking, Dean humming off-key and under his breath along with the radio, Castiel wondering what severity of car accident would be the right level to knock sobriety into Dean's thick skull.

* * *

They fall, without much effort, into an uncomfortable routine. Living in the city means Castiel has the luxury of sleeping in past eight every morning. He makes coffee and reads while he eats his cereal—sometimes the local newspaper, sometimes a book from the stash of (almost certainly stolen) library books he found in the trunk of the Impala. So far he's read _1984_ (which he found unsettling) and is about a third of the way through _Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH._ Dean usually stumbles in while he's making peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches for his lunch, and lurches straight for the leftover coffee. His hair is matted on the left side of his head every morning, and he'll blink at Castiel with a sort of dizzy, ineffective grumpiness. Castiel, in response, tries not to stare at Dean's mouth. He fails more often than not, accidentally licks his own lips once, but Dean's usually grinding his knuckles into a headache and doesn't notice.

Work, time enough for lunch around three-thirty, then work until close. He mops up after the last load of dishes has been left out to dry overnight, says goodnight to Katy, who gives him a shy smile as she locks up, and walks home, apartment keys clutched in his fist _just in case_. Dean's rarely home when he gets back, and Castiel assumes he's at a bar somewhere nearby—probably hustling pool, possibly getting laid, definitely drunk. He makes ramen or mac  & cheese for dinner, or reheats pizza or takeout if there's some left in the fridge. He reads more or listens to the radio (there's one built in under a kitchen cabinet that picks up a lot of music he doesn't understand, a foul-mouthed talk-show host, and a local Catholic station); sometimes he does push-ups or takes a shower out of sheer boredom more than anything else. Once, he takes his frustration out on the couch for a few hard punches before the cloud of dust particles filling the air makes him sneeze and he gives it up. He has to sleep on that thing, after all.

Other nights Dean is home when he gets off work, already passed out on the couch, and Castiel takes the bed, or does at least until Dean lurches in around three or four in the morning and collapses on the bedspread, at which point Castiel rolls gingerly out of the way and pads sleepily into the living room to curl up on the couch under the ratty afghan.

Weekends are different, more awkward—without Castiel at work until the evening, they collide more rather than living around the edges of each others' lives. Castiel takes his time walking home on Saturday afternoons, sitting in a nearby park when the weather is good, or browsing the shelves of a tiny bookstore. There's a huge brick church on his route to and from work, and sometimes Castiel sneaks in to sit at a pew in the last row for a vespers service or a Saturday mass. None of it is _right_ , of course, but there is something about it that is… he hesitates to use the word _true_ about anything human—the scope of this plane of existence is so minimal, so fractional compared to the whole of reality—but still, there is something _of_ truth about the experience. The reverence and mystery, the ritual. He likes the way time seems to slow down amid the chanting and the candlelight, how easy it is to rest his head on his hands and imagine that he's witness to something larger. That his life hasn't been stripped down to the flimsy shell he knows he is.

When he comes home smelling like incense, Dean wrinkles his nose and asks if he's started smoking pot. Castiel, petulant, snaps back that “someone in this house has to stay sober.” Dean tells him to mind his own business. Castiel swears at him. Dean slams the door as he leaves, and Castiel sits at the kitchen counter and wishes he could get high, because he's pretty sure he would _love_ it.

* * *

Sundays he wakes up late, and Dean even later. He runs errands, restocks on peanut butter and cereal and shampoo. He buys four chicken-flavored ramen (his favorite) and four “oriental” (Dean's favorite), although he's pretty sure “oriental” isn't a flavor. Bananas, too, if they're not spotty or completely green, or if they are, then canned peaches.

He lingers in the baking aisle today, eyeing the boxed mixes. He got paid yesterday, and even though he knows exactly how much of it has to go towards rent and their electric bill, he's feeling extravagant and he really, _really_ doesn't want to go back to just sitting on the couch all afternoon and wishing he had something to do so that his helplessness without Dean isn't so glaringly obvious. So he grabs a box of brownie mix, reads the instructions on the back, and starts hunting for eggs and oil.

He's back at the apartment before he realizes he probably should have bought a mixing bowl as well. And measuring cups. He growls in frustration, looking around the kitchen for something to improvise with.

Dean wanders in from the bedroom while he's on his hands and knees with his head stuck inside one of the cupboards, hoping to find something left by a previous tenant. “Cas? What the hell are you doing?”

Castiel jumps, smacking his head on the cupboard. Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes almost immediately. “Dammit, Dean,” he complains, leaning back against the stove and rubbing at the lump he can feel forming on the back of his head.

“Sorry.” He sounds sorry, too, Castiel can hear the sympathetic wince in his voice. “Are you baking brownies?”

“Trying to. We don't have a mixing bowl.”

“Just mix them up in the pan.”

“They'll stick,” Castiel retorts. “It says you're supposed to grease the pan or use cooking spray.”

“So we'll scrape 'em out with a fork, it'll be fine, Cas. Trust me, I used to make them that way all the time, back when me and—” Dean clenches his jaw shut very suddenly, and takes a long swig from the beer in his hand, which turns into him finishing off the bottle. He tosses it in the sink and opens the fridge for another. “They'll be fine, Cas,” he mutters, and moves over to the couch.

He stays there, quietly watching while Castiel dumps the mix into the disposable aluminum pan, measures out a guess at amounts for oil and water in a coffee mug (if it's a _cup_ of coffee that can't be entirely irrelevant, right?), adds a little extra oil to make up for the fact that the pan isn't greased, and fishes egg shell fragments out of the slimy goo. He stirs thoroughly with a plastic spoon, then pokes and swirls at the batter while he waits for the oven to heat up.

“What are you doing, Cas?” Dean asks again, softer this time.

Castiel shoots him an irritated look. “Still baking brownies.”

“No, I mean—” Dean's on his feet, moving unsteadily towards the counter, and Castiel notices that the bottle is practically empty, “— _this_ ,” Dean finishes, gesturing expansively with his free hand, his voice rising. “All of this, Cas, what are you doing? Playing house?”

He colors, and doesn't really know what to say in response, so he keeps prodding at the batter, refuses to meet Dean's eyes.

“I mean, you have a job, you do the grocery shopping, you fucking bake on the weekends? Cas, that doesn't make— _this—_ ” he jerks his hand awkwardly back and forth between the two of them. “It's not a _thing_ , Cas, it doesn't make us some _happy couple_.”

“I know that,” Castiel snaps, probably a little too quickly. He catches Dean's eyes, finally, tries to stare him down with as much resolve as he can muster.

Dean throws him a lopsided grin, settles all his weight onto his elbows and rolls forward a little, unsteady. “I mean, I get it, Cas, I know I'm quite the catch,” he leers.

There's heat, pooling in his belly, and fuzziness in his brain, and Castiel can see himself lean across the counter and pull Dean towards himself, one hand curled around the back of his neck and the other gripping the countertop, to steady himself. He can imagine tilting his head, catching Dean's lips with his own, kissing him hungrily, licking into his mouth and pulling him closer—

—as if he can read Castiel's mind, Dean licks his own lips slowly and—

“Dean. _Stop._ ”

Castiel's breathing is heavy and ragged, and the front of his jeans is tight; he's thankful for the kitchen counter between them, even though he knows the idea of hiding _anything_ at this point is entirely useless. Because this isn't a _joke_ , and now he's gone and made that painfully clear and he has _no idea_ how Dean is going to react and _oh god what if he leaves, what if he just drives off and I spend the rest of my life washing dishes in Pittsburgh?_

Dean eyes him carefully for a long minute, pulls back from the counter a bit and Castiel isn't sure he can name whatever it is that flickers across his face. It's gone almost immediately, though, covered over by the same hard, cynical, _I'm-drunk-you-can't-ask-me-to-care_ mask that Dean's perfected at this point. He shakes his head, but his voice is rough when he says, “Cas, this is dysfunctional as fuck, you know that, right?”

The oven beeps.

“Obviously,” Castiel answers, and grabs the pan of brownies.


	5. Chapter 5

 

It's twenty minutes until close, and Castiel has never been more ready to leave work. He broke a plate during the lunch rush and managed to slice his finger open on it—not so deep that it was anything serious, but he had to take a break for ten minutes until the bleeding stopped, which created a pile-up that Jack was still complaining about. The cut has been stinging in the hot water all afternoon, although by now he's gotten fairly numbed to it. He has a headache as well, pulsing behind his right eyebrow, which isn't helped by the clatter of dishes mixed with the top hits of the 80's radio which Jack always blares while they're cleaning up.

He's so close to freedom, though, just another four racks of mugs to put away and the floor to mop, and he can walk home and collapse onto the couch. He might even skip dinner tonight, the headache has quashed his hunger somewhat and he's so tired he's not sure he'd stay awake long enough to microwave ramen anyway.

“Hey, Novak!” Katherine calls from the swinging door, and Castiel bites off a sigh as he turns around.  _Please, please don't have some last-minute job for me_ , he thinks, but instead she has a bag of pastries in her hand. “These are too old for me to sell tomorrow, but they should still be okay for another day or two.”

“Um, thank you,” Castiel says as he takes the bag from her.

She waves her hand. “It's no big thing, if you don't eat them I'd put them out for the birds, so.” She swings her apron over her head and drops it in the laundry pile in the supply closet. “Katy's already gone home, so make sure the door locks behind you when you leave, okay?”

Castiel agrees and thanks her again, then finishes his last pass around the kitchen with the mop. Normally he's fastidious about it, but tonight he's having a hard time keeping his eyes open enough to walk in straight lines, so a half-assed job will have to do. If he missed a spot, he'll get it tomorrow night.

He eats two of the pastries on his walk home, one filled with poppy seeds and another with a cheese-and-fruit filling that was starting to dissolve the surrounding dough into mush. He makes a few faces at that one, trying to get the sticky taste of it off the roof of his mouth. Still, they'll give him something more interesting to eat for breakfast than off-brand corn flakes. Either that, or Dean will come home and eat the whole bunch while he's asleep.

It's warm out, the sort of thick, oppressive heat of late summer, and the entryway of their apartment building is only slightly cooler. The lack of air conditioning is one disadvantage over a hotel, he realizes now. Maybe he can talk Dean into another shopping trip this weekend, he thinks as he waits for the elevator, leaning his forehead against the cool metal doors in an attempt to relieve the pounding in his head. An AC unit for the window is probably too expensive, but maybe they can buy a little rotating fan at least.

The lights in their apartment are on, he notices as he's fumbling for the key. Dean had better be home, he thinks, because if he's gone out and left the lights on again and run up their electric bill, Castiel is going to be  _pissed._

Dean is home, sprawled out asleep on the couch with a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the floor next to him. Castiel rolls his eyes, dumps the remaining pastries on the counter and opens the fridge. There's a couple of slices of pizza left, but they're pepperoni and he doesn't particularly like the flavor of—

Wait.

Dean is usually a noisy sleeper, even without the obvious addition of screaming nightmares. He snores sometimes (Castiel remembers Sam ribbing him about it months ago, before Lucifer was freed, even, and Dean protesting furiously), and at best he's a heavy breather.

Right now, the room is silent.

_No. Please, please no, please no—_ “Dean?”

There's no answer. Castiel slams the refrigerator door so hard it rattles. “ _Dean!_ ”

He's kneeling on the floor next to him in two seconds, shaking his shoulders and feeling for a pulse. Dean's skin is clammy and he's not responding and  _oh god are his lips blue_ ? A pulse, maybe, but  _god_ it's so faint and he's fumbling his phone out of his pocket, dialing and pressing it to his ear, listening to it ring on the other end while his fingers clench and unclench desperately in the fabric of Dean's faded t-shirt.  _Please don't die. Please don't die._

“911, what is your emergency?”

“My—my friend is unconscious, he was drinking, please, send someone right away I don't know what to do, please!” He knows he's babbling, needs to take a breath and calm down but he can't help it, the words just keep tumbling out of him.

“Okay, sir, I hear you,” the woman on the other end of the line reassures him. “Can you give me your address?”

He rattles it off, and she thanks him, like she's trying to calm down a child. “Okay, I've got an ambulance on its way, sir,” she tells him. “Can you give me your name?”

“Cas.”

“Okay, Cas, tell me about your friend, is he breathing?”

He puts a trembling hand up against Dean's lips, waits an agonizing three seconds, and then— “Yes, he's breathing. Just barely.”

“Okay, that's good, Cas, shallow breathing is very normal. Do you know how long he's been out?”

“No, I just got home from work and found him.”

“You said he was drinking?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know if he might have taken something else as well—medication, drugs, could he have been smoking marijuana?”

“I—no?” He scans the room quickly, tries to think if he's seen any old pill bottles among Dean's things, if he could possibly have missed a whole  _other_ facet of Dean's willful slide into whatever this is. “I don't think so,” he says finally. “I think it's just the alcohol.”

“Okay, Cas, that's good, you're doing good.” He's so tired of her patronizing bullshit, telling him he's  _being a brave boy_ , he just wants the ambulance here already, dammit, and Dean in a hospital with doctors and nurses who can save him because Castiel  _can't_ . He's fucking  _useless_ and he knows it, hates himself for it.

“—vomited?”

He forgot that she was on the phone still. “Um, what?”

“Has he vomited?”

“No.”

“Okay, Cas, so he might vomit, which is okay—it's good, actually, his body is getting rid of the poison. I need you to keep a careful eye on him, though, so that if he does he doesn't choke on it. Is he on his back right now?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then turn his head to the side for me. Got it?”

He turns Dean's head carefully, relays the information to the woman, continues to take in her advice and reassurance on auto-pilot. He's focused on Dean's face, though, the three-day scruff on his jaw, the hack-job of a haircut he gave himself last weekend, the ocean of freckles across his nose and pale cheeks. His hand is still on Dean's head, fingers tangled in his hair, trying to press whatever comfort and presence he can into him, since there's nothing else he can do. “I'm sorry, Dean,” he whispers, even though he knows it's not his fault, that both of them should have seen this coming weeks ago and that it was only a matter of time before the consequences caught up with them.

But it's not like the truth is going to keep him from shouldering all the blame for this—he learned to be human from Dean, after all.

The woman is still talking when the EMTs arrive, and they ask Castiel the same barrage of questions while they're checking Dean's vitals and strapping an oxygen mask over his face. A short, middle-aged man is questioning him, and Castiel stands with his arms crossed, constantly shooting glances back over his shoulder to where two paramedics are prepping an IV for Dean's left arm and cranking a stretcher up to couch-height so they can maneuver him on and strap him down.

“Mr. Novak?” He snaps his head back. “Mr. Novak, does Mr. Winchester have health insurance?”

There are cards in the glove box, he knows, but they're all under fake names and he has no idea how to use them anyway. “No, he doesn't.”

“Okay, then we're going to take him to detox over at the emergency clinic on 17th instead of the main hospital. Do you know where that is?” Castiel shakes his head, and the man flips over a card and scribbles an address on it. “I can't let you ride in the ambulance since you're not family, but you can meet us there and they should let you in to see him once he's stabilized.”

Castiel looks at the address. “Do you know which city bus I can take to get there?” he asks. “The car is his, I can't drive.”

The man's face softens. “The twenty-four ought to get you there, you can catch the eastbound over by the CVS on Mulberry.”

The paramedics have Dean secured and are speaking medical code to each other back and forth across his body as they wheel him to the door. Castiel swallows. “Is he…” He forces himself to grind out the words, he was an angelic warrior once, after all. “Is he going to be okay?”

The man squeezes his shoulder and gives him a hopeful smile. “He's in good hands, buddy, and you did good finding him.” It's not really an answer.

And then they're gone, and the silence in the apartment is suffocating. Castiel stands looking at the address in his hand for a long minute. He can hear the voices of curious neighbors congregating in the hallway.  _Do you think he took sleeping pills? My_ baba _took sleeping pills—Heroin, I'll bet—Nah, definitely a suicide—Fuck, I'd probably try to off myself too if I were a fa—_

Castiel slams the door, stumbles into the bathroom, and throws up. He wipes his mouth afterwards with the back of his wrist, his stomach quivering and his limbs like jelly. He wants to lie down on the cool linoleum floor and sleep—maybe he'll wake up and none of this will have happened, or maybe it still will but he'll have at least missed five or six hours of it. He knows that he'll never forgive himself for not being there, though, even if there's nothing he can do but sit and watch.

* * *

Except they won't even let him sit and watch. The receptionist is kind, but firm: only family members allowed in detox unless patients make a specific request otherwise, and since Dean is still unconscious…

“But he doesn't _have_ any family!” Castiel insists for what feels like the twentieth time. “There's no one else to call, no one else who is going to come for him.”

“Sorry, kid,” she answers. “You can leave me your number if you'd like, and when he wakes up we'll let him know you've been asking to see him, but until then I can't do anything about it, law's the law.”

_And what if he never wakes up?_ Castiel wants to scream at her, and possibly throw things, but there's a wide-eyed three-year-old sitting on her mother's lap just to the left of the receptionist's window and he doesn't want to scare her. “Can I wait out here?” he asks instead.

She gives him a pitying look. “Honey, he's going to be out of it for a couple hours still at best, and he's not going to know the difference. But yes, you can stay,” she acknowledges when Castiel gives her a stony look. “If we start running out of chairs for patients I'll kick you out, though.”

He ends up sitting in one of the molded-plastic chairs all night. He nods off once or twice, but between his worrying over Dean and the steady stream of people in and out of the waiting room, it's not too hard to stay awake. At one point there's a red-faced, screaming infant in the seat next to him, in the arms of a young man who looks completely overwhelmed. A hungry-looking teenager—fifteen, maybe sixteen, with short hair and denim cut-offs—sits across from Castiel most of the night, scuffling their feet back and forth on the tile floor. Around five-thirty they leave for a while, and come back with two cups of coffee, one of which they hand to Castiel with a shy smile. He stammers his thanks, and then burns his tongue on his first sip.

At a quarter after six the waiting room actually does overfill—a car accident down the block brings in an unexpected wave of patients and family members—and the receptionist makes good on her threat to kick Castiel out. Kindly, though. “Go stretch your legs, honey,” she tells him. “You don't need to go far, this place should clear out again in a quarter-hour or so.” When he protests, she offers up a bribe: if he gives up his seat, she'll send someone back to check on Dean's progress and bring him an update.

Castiel paces in front of the clinic, watching the sunrise. He plays with his phone in his pocket, considers calling Bobby and decides against it. If Bobby could help somehow, he'd call him in a heartbeat, but as it is, there's nothing he can do, and this is Dean's story to tell. If… Castiel wishes he hadn't looked up the signs, symptoms, and potential outcomes of alcohol poisoning (he did, back when they were holed up outside of Pittsburgh), because now he knows all the worst-case scenarios that might happen—liver failure, severe memory loss, coma, death—and they're all happening in his mind, all of them at once over and over again.

“Novak?” He spins around, tripping over his feet as he turns (he's sleepier than he thought), to find the receptionist standing in the doorway. “There's a nurse to talk to you, honey. He's awake.”

* * *

The nurse is tall, with tight dreadlocks pulled back into a messy bun at the back of her head. “Dean's awake now, Mr. Novak, but he's still pretty groggy and in some pain.” She flips through her notes. “You told the receptionist he doesn't have any family, does he have someone to look after him for the next few days?”

“Yes, I can. I'm his—roommate.”

She gives him a knowing half-smile at his stutter, and he can feel himself blushing. She moves quickly on, though. “Okay, well then I probably don't need to tell you that from the condition of his liver I'm thinking this wasn't an isolated binge-drinking episode, and that Dean has been consuming large amounts of alcohol on a regular basis?”

He looks at the floor. “I know.”

“Well, what this means is that he's going into withdrawal, or will be in a matter of hours. The best thing for him would be to check into a rehab center for monitoring, but if that's not an option then he's going to need to you keep an eye on him, and it's not going to be too pretty.” She hands him a sheet of paper with information on it front and back, as well as a pamphlet in a muted green titled _Alcohol Dependency: Finding and Getting Help_.

The nurse squeezes his shoulder. “You help him as best as you can, but you have to remember that in the end he's got to do this for himself, okay?” Castiel nods, uncertain of how else to respond, and follows her down the hallway. He folds up the papers and shoves them in his back pocket.

Dean's in a room with three other beds, all lined up against a long wall with striped curtains separating them. He's propped up on pillows, has an IV in his arm, and looks a little pale, but beyond that Castiel is almost surprised at how _okay_ he looks. Although, in comparison, the last time he saw Dean in a hospital bed he had a crushed trachea, three broken ribs, and forty-years worth of just-dragged-kicking-and-screaming-to-the-surface guilt and trauma, thanks to Castiel. Simply drinking himself into a coma probably shouldn't look so dramatic, especially since he's been building up to it for weeks.

The nurse has to run to check on another patient, so it's just Castiel walking cautiously over to the bed. Dean's eyes flicker over to him, then away again. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

Castiel swallows hard, then goes for the only piece of truth he thinks he can say. “I'm glad you're okay.”

“Nurse said you waited out there all night?” His voice is rough, like he's coughed up a handful of razor blades with a little acid mixed in.

“I did.”

“You shouldn't have.” He doesn't say it sweetly, like _oh, I'm touched, that was so thoughtful._ It's more _how fucking stupid are you?_

“You can't tell me what to do,” Castiel parries back, and Dean can't fight him on that one, so he shrugs and leaves it at that.

“They're making me finish out this IV bag, and then I'm a free man.” He panics suddenly. “Cas, you didn't drive over here did you?”

“I took the bus.”

“Oh thank god.” Dean sinks back into his pillow. “Um, where are we?”

“It's an emergency clinic on the east side of the city, about twenty minutes by bus.” Castiel checks the time on his phone, remembers the papers in his back pocket. “If we're going home, that is.”

“If?”

He rushes ahead. “Dean, the nurse suggested that you might recover better at a rehab center.”

“Fucking—no.” Castiel opens his mouth to protest, but Dean cuts him off, his voice hard. “I am not fucking doing it, Cas, do not ask me again.” He shifts in the bed, angles his shoulders away from Castiel's chair. “We're taking the bus back or I'm walking back, but either way this conversation is over.”

“Dean.” He's had a long time to think about this in the waiting room, asking himself why he hasn't fought harder for this. He just rolled over on day one and let Dean get away with whatever he wanted, because he was too scared of pushing him away and losing him. He's spent months trying to convince himself that this is somehow better—because Dean doesn't outright hate him? _But he doesn't love you, either. And you let him break himself so you could keep him._

He knows the nurse is right, that this isn't something he can _make_ Dean fix. But he can at least try. “Dean, I think that you _do_ need help, and maybe going immediately to rehab isn't—”

_“Cas.”_ Dean cuts him off. “Do not do this, not here.” His voice is so low it's hardly anything but a scratchy whisper. “Jesus Christ, Cas, I cannot do this here.”

He's aware again of the other patients in the room, of the nurses flitting in and out. Castiel takes a deep breath, and nods, even though Dean's eyes are screwed shut. “I'll check the bus schedule,” he says, and gets up.

* * *

They're home all of three minutes before everything falls apart. Dean heads back to the bedroom to change his clothes, while Castiel starts a pot of coffee and nibbles at another of the now-stale pastries. He hears Dean swear colorfully, and then he stalks into the kitchen, straight for the bottle of whiskey stashed above the fridge.

“What the hell!” Castiel snaps. “Dean, you—” _you almost died_ , he wants to say, but can't, because he's terrified that _almost_ will be the part of that sentence Dean is upset by.

Dean swallows and screws the cap back on the bottle. “Cas, I got sick, okay?” he complains. “It's not the end of the world. If I got food poisoning would you expect me to just stop eating?”

“You are aware of the fact that you just equated alcohol with food, right?”

“Jesus, what do you want me to say, huh? You want me to admit that I have a problem? 'Hi, my name's Dean, and I'm a fuckin' alcoholic,” he parrots. “'Cause here's the truth, Cas: everything's shit, booze isn't. End of story.”

“You can't expect to just keep living like this, though,” Castiel responds. It's not a great rejoinder, but his mind is caught on _everything's shit_ and hearing in its place _I don't want you_.

“Why not,” Dean says flatly. “Cas, everyone in my life has been seriously juiced up for some part of their life or another—my dad, Bobby, Ellen, hell, even Pastor Jim.” He grins, and it's ugly. “Life's a bitch, angel, and who're you gonna complain to about that?”

“Dean, please, you know you're not happy, you know you're not even _trying_ to be.” Dean shrugs and declines to defend himself, but Castiel plunges ahead anyway. “I don't want you to do this to yourself,” he pleads. “And okay, maybe I don't matter—” it hurts to say it, even though he knows it's true “—but Dean, Sam wouldn't have wanted—”

“ _What the fuck do you know about it?_ ” Dean explodes, rounding on Castiel with a kind of savage fury that makes him think of hellhounds. “What the fuck do you know, you haven't lived my life! Sam _leaves_ , okay? He _leaves_. This is history fucking repeating itself. Do you think he gave a _shit_ about me when he left for Stanford, huh? You think he ever returned a fucking phone call, gave a rat's ass about Dad falling off the deep end and pulling me down with him? Jesus Christ, I was laid up for a week once in a hospital in Palo Alto, and he never showed, never even called. And the things I've done to try to get him back…” He draws in a shaky breath. “So no, Cas, I don't give a fuck what Sam would have wanted, because he _left,_ you get that? He jumped, and he did it on purpose and left me here and now he's down—he's—”

He turns pale suddenly, whips around and lurches to the bathroom. Castiel can hear him retching and gagging violently. There's next to nothing in his stomach, but the dry-heaving goes on for minutes. When it finally sounds like it's dying down, Castiel fills a mug with water at the sink and approaches softly. Dean is sprawled on the linoleum floor, slumped up against the bathtub. He has his arms wrapped tight around his middle, hugging himself as if he could somehow keep all the pain in. His eyes are screwed shut, but there are tears leaking from the corners anyway.

Castiel crouches beside him. He's about to say something, but Dean beats him to it, his voice a harsh, desolate whisper: “You never looked for him, Cas. You never even tried.”

Castiel freezes. He doesn't even know what he's feeling (anger, guilt, desperation—all of the above?), but his brain is just blinking _out, get out now_ , and so he leaves the mug on the floor beside Dean and closes the door firmly. He can't get out of the apartment, because if something were to happen now, because of this, he'd never forgive himself, ever. And he's already called Katherine to beg for a sick day, so he has nowhere else to be. But he can't look at him right now, now when everything's come crashing down like this.

He curls up on the couch, his face pressed into the musty cushions, and realizes that, for the first time since he met Dean, he's starting to think about leaving him.


	6. Chapter 6

 

Castiel rarely dreams, and if he's honest, he's a little bit disappointed about it. Eons back, long before he ever imagined he'd spend much of any time among humanity (let alone _fall_ ), he'd found dreaming fascinating. Biologically-encoded hallucinations, vivid jumbles of ideas and situations that only the subconscious could cook up—but then parodied and replicated after waking in invention, art. His quiet envy of imagination should probably have been an early warning signal, he realizes now, much too little, too late.

Now that he's human and sleeps (most nights), he's had a total of four dreams. In three of them, he's been washing dishes at the diner, except it's both the diner and not, with shades of someplace else mixed in—their apartment, a hotel somewhere in eastern Iowa, the green room where Zachariah kept Dean, where Castiel had realized finally that eventually everything would lead to this point. In the other, he dreamed about the park on his walk home—Gabriel was on one of the swings, singing a Katy Perry song, while Castiel sat by a pond that shouldn't have been there and fed stale pastries to a trio of ducks. Hardly the escapist adventures he'd been hoping for, and he's more than a little annoyed that the best his brain can seem to come up with is muddling up locations.

His subconscious has been holding out on him. Building up reserves, flexing its muscles, waiting for the right moment to burst onto the scene.

Something like that, anyway.

* * *

_He's in a hallway. An old hotel, maybe. The carpet is patterned like a Persian rug, and there are non-smoking signs on the doors that march past him on either side. He picks one at random, fumbles for the doorknob, but there is none and it pushes open easily, swinging out into the hallway behind him before thumping back into place._

_There's no bed in the room, just a Devil's trap etched into the floor. The curtains are drawn over the window and he can hear chattering on the other side, Katy calling orders back to the kitchen._

_“Dean's not here,” Anna says, coming up beside him._

_“I know.”_

_“He tastes like leather and whiskey.”_

_He didn't know that._

_She hums and pulls her arms tighter around herself. “Or he did then, at least. Now I think he'd just taste like bile.”_

_Castiel turns away from her and drags his fingers across the mirror on the wall, and they come back bloody. He rubs at the mirror again, and this time cracks appear and spiderweb across the surface in a precise, delicate rhythm. Shards of glass peel away like flaking paint, and he picks at them, wedging his fingernails under the edges and prying them back from the tacky glue beneath. They collect in a pile at his feet, littering the carpet like snowflakes. God's precious creations, every one unique._

_“You never looked,” Dean says. He's sitting cross-legged in the Devil's trap, and Castiel rushes over to him, feeling the weight of his useless wings heavy against his back. “You never looked,” Dean says again. Castiel holds up his hands, blood running down from under his nailbeds now. He tries to explain, but his voice won't work, so he touches Dean's face instead. He leaves fingerprints behind, and Dean flinches under his touch._

_“There's nothing there, Cas,” he says. “And you're fucking broken now, anyway.” His lips are blue, and the pulse in his throat has stopped. Dean snaps his fingers, tilts his head comically to the side with a sharp jerk. “Flatline,” he grins. Castiel tries to pull away, but Dean's arms are around his back and shoulders, circling him, going cold and stiff. “What's the matter, Cas, you don't want me anymore?” His skin is starting to crack, peeling away like flaking paint. “I fucked myself up so we'd match, Cas. Don't you want me now? What's wrong with you, don't you—”_

There's no boundary between the dream and waking, no sudden shock. Castiel is just there, lying on the couch and shivering, breathing hard. He knocked the blanket onto the floor at some point during the night, but he can't seem to bring himself to reach down and recover it. He just lies there, mostly trying not to think.

He falls asleep again eventually, and dreams the same thing again, only this time it's not Anna who talks to him, but Alistair. When he wakes up, Dean is sprawled next to him, grinning lazily. His hair is a mess, and the sheet is only barely pulled up past his hips. “That was incredible, Cas,” he murmurs, pressing blue lips to his shoulder, and Castiel wakes up again.

He gives up at that point and puts on a pot of coffee.

* * *

Dean stumbles into the living room four hours later in boxers and a t-shirt, scratching at his bedhead. He mumbles a good morning at Castiel and takes a coffee cup down from the shelf. The mostly-empty coffee urn baffles him, and he waves it in Castiel's direction. “You drink this whole thing already?”

“Yes.”

Dean shakes his head and pulls the coffee canister over to his side of the counter. “You're going to give yourself some serious heartburn, man,” he comments. “Or is that something else the God Squad's exempt from?”

“Fuck you,” Castiel snaps.

Dean's eyebrows shoot off his head. “Okay, never mind, sounds like maybe you need this second pot more than I do.” Castiel stalks over to the counter and slams his cup down, and Dean's hands fly up in mock surrender. “Jesus, Cas, I'm joking, okay? You need to lighten up.”

“Yeah, well you need to sober up.”

Dean crosses his arms and glares at him. “Hey, Cas, can you maybe save being a total hard-ass until after breakfast?”

“I already ate,” Castiel replies, which isn't true but sounds good.

“Cas, what's going on with you?”

“ I'm sick of your bullshit, that's what's going on,” Castiel answers, because he's not about to say  _I dreamed that you died. Three times. And that we had sex._ He grabs phone and keys and marches to the door. “I'm going to work, Dean—you know, so that we can pay rent?”

H e slams the door unnecessarily loudly behind him, but not hard enough to cover up Dean yelling, “Yeah, well fuck you too, Cas!”

* * *

His anger fuels his whole walk to work, and most of the lunch rush as well. Jack steers a wide berth around him in the kitchen, letting Castiel scrub and rinse and fume on his own.  He starts to calm down around mid-day, almost to the point where he feels guilty for his outburst. But not quite. Dean had seemed genuinely taken aback, probably in large part because Castiel kept his frustration bottled up for so long. But, if he's being honest, Dean really ha s seemed to be trying harder in the days since his overdose. He'd still been drinking, but less, going for “functioning alcoholic” rather than “shit-faced disaster.” He'd tried to hide it from Castiel more, too, although whether that was Dean being considerate or feeling guilty, he's not sure. Guilt's definitely part of the equation—Dean cooked dinner a few nights ago, for crying out loud.  But Castiel has righteous indignation on his side, and it fans a decent-sized flame.

N ot so much, though, that when his shift ends and he has  _seven_ missed calls from Dean, his heart doesn't seize up into his throat in panic. He keys in the voicemail code, fingers shaking, worst-case scenarios running through his brain. Dean's hurt, or sick. Or he called to apologize. He called to apologize and when Castiel didn't answer he got angry and did something stupid and now he's in the hospital again.

_“You have—seven—unheard messages.”_

He's dead and the nurses are calling from his phone.

_“First—unheard message:”_

“ Heyyyyy Cas, what'sup?” Castiel's jaw clenches, and the panic drains out of him as quickly as it had arrived. “M'jus callin' from  _work,_ y'know?  Makin' a little cash to s'port our fucked-up happy lil' family.” Dean hiccups and buzzes his lips into the phone. “Man, Cas, you're an uptight little motherfucker, y'know that? I mean, you could do  _anything_ .” He says the word again, drags it out. “ _Annnnnnything_ , Cas. And you wanna wash fuckin' dishes at a fuckin' diner in  _fuckin' Pittsburg_ ?” He giggles. “That's  _laaaaame_ , Cas. So yeah, I might be kinda fucked up, but y'know what, at least I'm not—”

T he recording cuts off, leaving Castiel uncertain whether he wanted to hear what Dean was about to say or not. Either way, he's frustrated and unbelievably pissed off. He punches angrily through the other six voicemails, all of them background noise, a few only a couple seconds long. He can hear Dean's voice in a few, a distant mumble, but mostly it's the sounds of a very noisy bar: bottles clinking, people yelling, a bad country song playing behind everything. There's the crack of pool balls in the last message, confirming what he had already guessed from Dean's earlier slurring about calling from work.

Castiel deletes the final message and jams the phone back into his pocket. He wants to hurt something, anything, preferably something Dean-shaped. He eyes the brick wall of the diner. He knows better than to kick it, but there's a rock lying by his feet and he picks it up and hurls it hard, aiming for the dumpsters. The hollow thud as it hits plastic is not nearly as satisfying as he needs it to be.

“Novak!” He's bending down for another stone, straightens quickly when he hears his boss's voice. “Are you trying to break my property?” Katherine asks, arms crossed.

Castiel scowls and shakes his head. “Sorry. I just—family problems. I got carried away, I'm sorry.”

Katherine looks him up and down. “You gonna be alright?”

“I'll take care of it.”

He knows where Dean is, there's only one dive bar in the area big enough to squeeze in a pool table. He knows, because Dean was complaining about it a few weeks ago, saying that he couldn't hustle as often as he'd like since there were so many regulars there and he had nowhere else to cycle through.

He's not really sure why he's going, he realizes once he's about two blocks away from the bar. It's not like he can just bodily drag Dean home. Probably. He did beat him up in an alley once, he remembers, although he's always just assumed that most of that was angelic strength. But maybe it was more anger than he realized, and if so, maybe he can do it again.

He really, _really_ hopes he can do it again.

A wall of cigarette smoke and the smell of stale beer hits him as he opens the door to the bar, and he coughs, his eyes watering slightly. A couple steps in, though, and it's not so bad; he's adjusted to the smell, and he starts scanning the room, looking for Dean. He's not hard to spot. The bar's busy, but not particularly crowded, and there's a direct line of sight from the front door to the pool table. Dean's circling it carefully, eyeing his next move. He's got a beer in his hand but there's no wobble in his step. The missed calls must have been from much earlier, giving him enough time to sober up a bit. He's still drunk, but he's not sloppy, and he lines up cue to ball with easy precision.

“Hey you, you gonna drink something or are you just gonna stare at my customers?” the bartender barks at him.

Castiel brushes past the counter. “I'm here to collect someone.”

Dean doesn't notice him at first; his back is turned, and he's taking a drink as his opponent sizes up his shot. Castiel just stands by the table with his arms crossed, waiting for Dean to turn around. When he does, his reaction is almost slapstick-comical. His eyes widen and he jumps perceptibly. “Jesus, Cas, what are you doing here?”

“Seven calls, Dean?” Castiel furrows his eyebrows at him. “Seven missed calls, you didn't think I would worry that something was wrong?”

“I didn't call you, Cas.” Castiel humphs and tilts his head to one side. Dean pauses, reflecting, and then colors slightly. “Okay, maybe I called you earlier. But, like, once.”

“I'm not going to argue details with you, the point is that you're out of control.” Castiel is seething now, the pent-up anger threatening to boil over. He knows on one level how petty this is, harping on Dean for accidentally drunk-dialing him, but the phone calls aren't the problem, really. The problem is this selfish, self-destructive creature that Dean has turned into, that he maybe always had the capacity to become. Only now he doesn't care enough to hold it back.

Dean rises to match Castiel's anger, blow for blow. “I'm _out of control_?” he sputters. “Dude, I don't know what you were expecting from me, but I don't really get more 'in control' than this.”

“Lovers' quarrel?” Castiel had forgotten about Dean's opponent—or, honestly, everyone else in the bar—but he realizes now that the man is watching them carefully, the look on his face part amusement and part disgust.

“What? No, man, it's nothing.” Dean's trying to laugh it off, but it's unconvincing. “C'mon, Cas, get out of here, I'm busy.”

Castiel laughs at him. “Oh, right, I forgot. You're at _work_. I'm so sorry to have bothered you.”

“Cas, fuck off,” Dean hisses, but his opponent's face has already gone deadly. He moves towards their end of the table, tapping his pool cue across his palm.

“You want to explain how this is 'work'?” he asks.

“Dude, it's a joke,” Dean answers. He shrugs, tries to relax his shoulders and appear nothing more than slightly miffed by the whole situation, but Castiel can see a nervous flush spreading across the back of his neck. “He's, uh, pissed 'cause I got laid off and I haven't exactly found a job yet, which _he_ thinks is somehow his business because his sister and me have a baby on the way…” He's inching in front of Castiel as he talks, trying to back him away.

“Shut up,” the other man barks, and Dean freezes. “I thought there was something off about you from the start, and finding out that you've cleaned out three or four other guys here in the past two weeks didn't help to make you look any more above board.” He grins. “And now that your _bitch_ here just outed you, well, that makes this even easier.” He twitches his fingers, and Castiel sees a couple of men get up from a corner table and move towards them.

The man cracks his knuckles and leers at them. “You know what we do with sick fucks like you?”

Dean tightens his grip on the pool cue in his hands. “Bite me.”

Which is, unsurprisingly, Castiel thinks, not the right thing to say in their situation.

Dean blocks the man's first swing with the cue, dodges to the side, and aims a hard kick at his knees. Castiel loses track of him after that, though, because the man's two friends are both circling him, blocking his view. They advance quickly, without any kind of slow, taunting preamble, and Castiel falls without hesitation into smiting mode. Only, he can't smite anymore, and if he had a weapon he'd be pretty handy with it, but he's not carrying an angel blade. He gets in a few solid punches, clearly more than the men were expecting from him, but it's two against one and he's out of practice.

He's also feeling the punches they return more than he ever has before. With his Grace, he wasn't necessarily invincible, but it provided a kind of cushion, both lessening the damage and pain and working immediately to heal any injuries he sustained. Dean described it as nanotech once, which he then had to explain was like a massive swarm of tiny robots performing 24/7 maintenance on your body. Castiel supposes it's a fairly accurate analogy, and wishes that, like most of Dean's references, it wasn't found exclusively in the realm of B-movie sci-fi, because he could use some replacement Grace right about now.

Most of the blows that land aren't too bad on their own, but they add up and start to wear him down. Eventually, though, the heavier of the two men catches the side of his face with such force that it knocks him to his back. He can't breathe for a minute, scrambling on the wooden floor, trying to find something behind him to haul himself back to his feet, or to use as a weapon, or _something_. His fingers find a table leg at the exact moment a heavy boot comes grinding down on his chest, pinning him in place.

The man standing over him has an emotionless face, his mouth in a serious line like he's a professional grave-digger—or, if Castiel's being honest, what he really looks like is an angel. His partner, equally talkative, grabs Castiel's wrist and twists his arm away from the table leg, and pulls, hard. Castiel bites back a scream.

They drag him to his feet, his vision starting to swirl and fuzz at the edges as the pain in his shoulder swells. The one holds him in place, Castiel's back tight against the man's chest, while the other lands punch after punch on Castiel's torso. An indeterminate amount of time passes—he knows he feels at least one rib snap at some point, but beyond that he has no way of gauging the time through the dizziness and fog. Eventually, though, the man judges that he's made his point, and he backs off, cracking his wrists. His friend shifts Castiel in his grip, holding him up against a table at arms' length.

He sees the bottle out of the corner of his eye for a brief second. Then there's a crack behind his ear, and it spreads and burns until he can't feel anything else. There's angry yelling coming from somewhere, and scuffling, then hands pulling him up from the table and turning him over.

“Jesus, Cas,” Dean breathes. Castiel tries to open his eyes to look at him, but there's a ceiling light just behind his head that burns into his eyes. “Those fuckers,” Dean mutters, running his hands over Castiel's chest and stomach to survey the damage. “Okay, Cas, mojo on up and let's get out of here before some other asshole decides to try to mess you up.”

“Can't…” He thinks he might laugh if he wasn't afraid his brain would fall out the back of his head.

“What, 'cause people are gonna be suspicious? So don't do the whole thing, man, just patch yourself up enough that we can walk out of here, 'cause I don't think I can carry you— _shit_ , Cas, your head's bleeding like a—”

—

“—fuck, Cas, you with me? Cas? _Castiel—_ ”

—

—

“— _jesusfuck_ — _”_

_—_

_“_ —on, Cas, just hold on for me, _please_ —”

—

—

—


	7. Chapter 7

 

He's lying in a bed with sheets pulled tight up to his chest, and it's cold. Not just the air around him, but inside him, too, like it's coating his bones. It's not a bad feeling, necessarily—it feels clean, and he suspects that there's some sort of pain lurking beneath the surface of the numbing cold which he's not eager to meet head-on. A monitor beeps quietly next to him, which he knows means that he's in a hospital.

When he opens his eyes, the room swims a little, and he has to blink a few times before anything comes into focus. Even then, it all still looks a little fuzzy. Dean's sitting in a chair by his bed, head tipped forward like he's about to nod off. He sits upright when he hears Castiel shift on the bed, and flashes him a tired smile. “Hey buddy, welcome back.”

There's a yellowing bruise around his left eye, and the sight of it slots all the pieces back into place for Castiel—the missed phone calls, everything at the bar, Dean's panic. And then nothing, mostly. He thinks he's been swimming in and out of consciousness for a while now, probably; he has vague memories of waking up and feeling like he was choking, and heavy rushes of pain that would bring him up to the surface and then drag him back down again just as quickly. He wonders how long he's been here, how many days of work he's missed, whether Dean would have thought to call the diner and let them know where he was. He knows it's not important, really, but Katherine's been so good to him, better than she should have had to be, and he doesn't want her to think he's so ungrateful he'd just quit without even telling her.

Dean leans forward, thumps a hand on the bed awkwardly as though he'd like to be touching Castiel instead but doesn't know if he's allowed. “Fuckin' rains, it pours, huh Cas?” When all Castiel gives him is a blank stare, he tries to laugh. “Didn't mean to make it look so exciting in here or anything. I mean, don't get me wrong, a hot nurse is one of God's greatest gifts to mankind, but there's only so much sexy a sponge bath can ever be—”

“Dean.” Talking hurts. “Stop being an idiot.”

Dean swallows and shuts up. A minute later he tries again, more subdued but still dancing around the fucking mammoth in the room. “You're, uh, Steve Clark,” he says. “For insurance.” He starts to list off Castiel's injuries, absentmindedly tallying them on his fingers. “You've got a couple of broken ribs, a fractured cheekbone, and a dislocated shoulder, but a bunch of torn tendons and shit too, so it's a little messier. Might come out again pretty easily, too, so no pro-wrestling for you after all, huh Cas?” Castiel doesn't laugh at this joke any more than the others, and Dean doesn't really look disappointed, he's too caught up in obviously needing to say something which he doesn't want to have to divulge.

“You were out for a while, Cas,” he says finally, rushing through the words like the might burn him. “Coma. For like twenty hours. The doctor's saying there might be some—lingering effects.”

Castiel chills, thinking maybe he's not understanding Dean completely and terrified that he is. “You're saying I have a brain injury.”

“Cas, it's fine, you're gonna be fine. You got knocked around a little is all, you'll be fine.” Castiel wonders if he realizes how much he's repeating himself. “And it's not serious, just dizziness, doc said you might be a little shaky on your feet, but yeah, that's all like recent trauma shit, you're going to be fine. They're saying they want to keep you here a couple more days, and then that it'll take, uh, four to eight weeks for recovery.”

He hesitates on the last word, and Castiel has to know. “A full recovery?”

“Cas…”

“Answer the question.”

“Fuck…” Dean mutters, running his hand across his face. He looks panicked, trapped. “They don't know, Cas, okay?” he says finally. “It sounded like it's possible, but it takes a lot of physical therapy, and…” He doesn't finish the sentence, but he doesn't need to. They'll be lucky if Steve Clark's insurance checks out for the rest of his hospital stay. It's never going to cover rehabilitation.

They're both quiet for a long time, trapped in their own thoughts. Dean's the one to finally break the silence.

“How long, Cas?”

“Since Ohio.”

“ _Fuck.”_ He buries his face in his hands, dragging his fingers through his choppy hair. “Fuck, Cas, why didn't you say something?”

“You haven't exactly been in a conversational mood recently.”

“Cas, you know me, man, I would have… _fucking hell_ , this is not how I wanted things to end up,” he finishes angrily.

“Well you've been doing an excellent job of trying to steer our lives in a better direction.”

“Cas, I'm sorry. _God_ , I'm so sorry, just let me fix this, okay?” His eyes are pleading, even if he's doing a decent job of keeping his voice level.

“Why?” Castiel asks. He thought he meant it as another jibe, but now that the word has left his mouth he finds he actually genuinely wants to know. “Why are you going to fix it, Dean? Why now? You haven't—” his voice hardens “—given a _shit_ for the past three _months_. But now, what, now you feel sorry for me because I'm broken?”

“I didn't—”

“Because I'm useless, because I can't do anything for you or for myself, and it was bad enough that I'm stuck in a tiny finite body but now it's a fucking _crippled_ body on top of that?”

“Castiel—”

“It's _Cas_ ,” he growls. “I'm not an angel of the Lord anymore.”

A flash of pain bursts through his head, traveling down his spine and igniting all the other pains in his shoulder and torso that were lingering under the surface. He tries not to let it show—he's still angry at Dean, dammit—but there are tears leaking out of his eyes before he knows they're there, and he's gasping for breath. Dean takes his wrist and gently leads his hand over to the railing. “Hey, hey, Cas, shhh, it's gonna be fine,” he soothes. “Morphine pump, okay? You just punch on this.” He arranges Castiel's fingers carefully around the plastic, and Castiel jams his thumb against the button. A fuzzy warmth floods through him, tingling and settling over his bones, pushing the pain back down.

Dean's hand is still covering his, and Castiel wants nothing more than to let him leave it there. But he can't have what he wants, not like this. For Dean to stay with him, put up with him and try to appease him just because Castiel is broken and he feels guilty? It'll break down, he knows it will—Dean will get tired of playing caretaker and Castiel will grow tired of being pitied, and in the end they'll both hate each other more than anything else. He knows, because they're already heading there.

He pulls his hand back, and Dean lets go reluctantly. “Cas?” he asks, his voice resigned. “What do you want me to do?”

“Whatever you want,” Castiel answers, his voice shaking. “I don't need you staying and trying to fix me just because you feel guilty. So just do whatever you want, okay Dean? You want to drink, drink; you want to start hunting again, hunt; you want to just drive off and end up wherever you end up, do that. Because I am tired of trying to fight you, Dean,” he finishes. “So please, don't try to pretend for me. Just go.”

There are tears prickling behind his eyes and he closes them, because he doesn't want to have to watch Dean leave. He's panicking, he can't believe he actually said all of that and he wants to take it back, but it was true, even if he wishes it didn't have to be. A tight pain settles in his chest, cutting through the morphine fuzz, and there's blood rushing in his ears, so loud that at first he thinks he mishears Dean's quiet response.

“What if I want you?”

Castiel's eyes fly open, and he can't help it, he says the first thing that comes to mind: “Bullshit.”

The look Dean gives him is shame and hurt, but he keeps going anyway. “Cas, I'm not lying to you, and I'm not just saying it, I swear.” He dips his head away from Castiel's gaze. “I know I fucked everything up, and I can't… I took you for granted, Cas,” he says, voice breaking. “And mostly because I'm a selfish dick, I know that. But part of it was… I don't know, Cas, you were _safe._ ”

Dean looks away, shakes his head. He's silent for long enough Castiel thinks he might have said his piece, hit a roadblock, but then he plunges ahead, his voice barely above a whisper. “I'm tired of people leaving, Cas, because _everyone_ does. And I know most of the time it's not their fault, people can't help dying, but _god_ , Cas, I couldn't take losing anyone else. And you couldn't die.” He shrugs. “And I didn't have to worry about it, so I could—I could… let you in. But then I guess, I forgot to let you in, because even when I was a self-destructive asshole you didn't want to leave, and I realized I didn't have to fight tooth and nail to keep you, and I was _so tired_ , Cas, just so goddamn tired…”

Castiel watches him, teetering on the edge between holding back in self-preservation and offering complete forgiveness. He knows Dean is telling the truth, there's no question in his mind on that point. He trusts him—always has, and always will. It's the hurt that holds him back: the damage Dean's capable of inflicting on himself, that spills over into Castiel's life without his noticing—or maybe even caring. It was easier before he fell, when he could tell himself that this was all insignificant in the grand scheme of things, despite the fact that it never felt that way. Now, though, this is all he has, just a tiny slice of time and the overwhelming fear that he'll get to the end and never have known what it would have been like simply to be with Dean and to be happy.

That's his answer, he supposes. He can't walk away and never even try.

“I did want to leave,” he says softly. “I mean, I thought about it, I've wondered for weeks if I've just been incredibly stupid and naive to think that any of this could get better. But I want to be with you, Dean. I think you know that.”

Dean swallows hard and finally looks up again. “Yeah,” he whispers, and Castiel thinks he's never seen him look quite so terrified. “I don't understand why you do, but I know.” He pauses, takes a shaky breath. “I'm not okay, Cas,” he confesses. “I don't think that's ever going to change and I'm not going to lie to you, I still really, _really_ just want to say fuck it and drown everything with booze.” He's reverting back into unshakable, yield-no-ground Dean Winchester, but he looks Castiel squarely in the eyes. “But if you'll let me try, Cas, I swear to God I want to try.”

And there's nothing Castiel can say in response to that but: “Okay.”

* * *

Castiel sleeps for the better part of the day. It's fitful, with sparks of pain pulling him up from sleep, but every time he resurfaces, Dean is there to guide his shaking fingers back to the morphine pump and reassure him once more that he's going to be fine, just go back to sleep. A nurse comes in in the late afternoon to check on him and change the sheets on his bed. She shines a penlight at him and makes him track the motions with his eyes. He gets a cheerful thumbs-up, and then she makes a note on her chart and tells him they'll send some food around if he's feeling awake enough. The idea of eating makes him queasy, but he knows that the sooner he shows progress the sooner they'll let him go, so he agrees.

Dean wrinkles his nose as soon as the nurse leaves the room. “I don't know how they expect people to get better on that shit,” he tells Castiel. “I swear, I got food poisoning from a hospital in South Bend when I was a kid.”

“Thank you,” Castiel dead-pans. “You've made me even more eager for dinner.”

Dean looks guilty for a moment, until he realizes that Castiel is joking. He grins sheepishly, and Castiel notices how worn-down he looks. There's a good chance he hasn't really slept since Castiel was admitted to the hospital, and that was over thirty-six hours ago.

“Dean,” he says gently, “go home. You need to sleep.”

“I'm fine.”

Castiel sighs. “Then will you do me a favor? Go to the diner and tell Katherine where I am? I don't want her to think I would abandon my job for no reason.”

Dean protests that he doesn't want to leave, but Castiel insists he's going to sleep the whole time anyway. He yawns exaggeratedly to prove his point, and Dean reluctantly gets up. “I'm giving the nurse my cell number, so if you need anything, you make her call me, okay?”

“Okay. Dean?” He stops in the doorway. “The diner makes an excellent reuben.”

Dean smiles and disappears into the hall.

_This is going to be okay_ , Castiel thinks as he leans back into the pillows. Yes, it's awkward, and they're nowhere near the idyllic future Castiel had been holding out for. And he honestly has no idea how far they'll be able to progress. But they've beaten heaven and hell before so maybe, just maybe, they can handle this.

* * *

True to his word, Castiel sleeps until just before Dean returns. The nurse must have visited while he was asleep, because there's a post-it note by the call button instructing him to let her know when he's hungry. Castiel has to squint to read it. His vision is still blurry, and he wonders if that's one of the “lingering effects” he can expect from a beer-bottle to the back of the head. He's tempted to feel for the scar he knows is behind his ear, wondering how large it is, but his left shoulder is immobilized and there's an  IV -line threaded through the back of his right hand that he's afraid of displacing, so he leaves it for now.

Dean pokes his head around the doorway. “They didn't bring you food yet? Good.” He's got a brown paper bag in his hand, which he balances on his chair while he looks around for the button to raise the head of the bed so Castiel can sit up. “Your boss sent this with me, I tried to insist on paying for it but she wouldn't let me.” He finishe s fiddling with the bed and pulls the tray over Castiel's lap. “She kinda reminds me of Ellen.”

Castiel agrees. It's not the first time he's thought that.

The bag  contains a  plastic take-out  container of  chicken soup,  thick with  carrots  and  dumplings.  Dean hands him a spoon. “Should still be warm.”

C astiel shifts his arm around carefully, trying not to tug too hard on the IV. His fingers feel stiff when he picks up the spoon, and as he adjusts his grip he can feel a slight tremor run though his hand. He tries to ignore it, but it takes him several tries to scoop up a carrot slice. He can feel Dean watching him, and his ears warm as he slowly gets the spoon to his mouth. He manages a few more bites, carefully  picking chicken and dumplings out of the broth, but the shaking is getting worse, and eventually a sharp twitch sends the spoon flying out of his fingers, showering him with tiny droplets of soup.

D ean snatches the spoon immediately and presses it back into Castiel's hand, as if he thinks that if he moves fast enough they'll both somehow forget what just happened. Castiel looks at his  still-trembling  hands and pushes the spoon away.

“ Cas, it's fine, you're doing good.”

I t's such an outrageous lie,  and he hates Dean for thinking that he'd fall for it. “ I spilled soup on myself like a child.”

“ Hey, I don't care, okay?”  Dean grabs the spoon, tries to  put it back in Castiel's hand  but he yanks his  arm away.

“I'm not hungry.”

“ Yeah, well,  that's irrelevant,  it's  all about, um, needing nutrients and shit to survive.”  Castiel stares at him, and Dean  rolls his eyes. “ Hey, don't look at me,  I'm pretty sure those were your exact words.”

“ 'Nutrients and shit'? Yes, that sounds exactly  like something I would say. ”

“ Shut up.”

C astiel takes the spoon reluctantly,  hissing  between clenched teeth as  his fingers try to betray him again.  Dean reaches over and gently covers his  shaking hand  with his own. “ Cas, relax,”  he says softly. “ There's no rush here.”

C astiel swallows and nods.

“ Do you want me to ask the nurse to bring you something else?”

C astiel shakes his head.

“ Do you want me to  go? I can go, if I'm making you nervous  or—”

“No,” he cuts him off. “Stay.”

D ean squeezes his hand. “ Sure . ”

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has been reading so far, and especially for all your lovely comments! Things are winding down now, but in a good way--these last few chapters are my favorite part of the story, and I hope you like them as well.

 

It's another day and a half before they finally leave the hospital. Castiel is antsy, nervous that a red flag will come up in the insurance and an army of doctors and police officers will come storming into his room. Dean assures him that they're fine, they probably have another day or two before anything starts to look suspicious, but Castiel doesn't want to play this to the wire and puts his foot down, even though the doctors are recommending he stay for monitoring for another twenty-four hours.

“They're not doing anything,” Castiel insists, and they're really not. They've taken him off the morphine and they're letting him get up to use the bathroom, so at this point the hospital is basically glorified room service. “I'm just sleeping and eating, and I can do that at home.” He doesn't mention some of the other things he has yet to do—take a shower, for instance, which, with his poor sense of balance, tremors, and one arm still in a sling, is probably not something he'll be able to do on his own, but they can cross that incredibly awkward bridge when they get to it.

“Okay, Cas, I hear you,” Dean finally caves. “You're taking a wheelchair out of here, though, and that's final.”

The nurses take Dean's side regarding the chair, and Castiel decides it's not worth putting up a fight over, especially given that he feels shaky just getting out of bed. It's lack of food, mostly, he tells himself, and hopes that it's true. Dean wasn't lying about the edibility of hospital food, and Castiel's been subsisting mostly on pudding and saltines. Pudding doesn't leave his spoon as easily as soup, and saltines are deceptively addictive.

Dean bats away the hovering nurses and insists on wheeling Castiel out himself. They have to stop by reception so that Castiel can hand over his paperwork, which raises some eyebrows—apparently “discharged against medical advice” and “cranial trauma” isn't a winning combination. The man at the desk double-checks that Castiel has all his prescriptions, information sheets, and referrals, and then they're finally out the door.

It's chilly out and storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. Castiel knows intellectually that it's just an unseasonably cold day, but he can't help but feel like he's lost time in the hospital and they're already deep into autumn.

The Impala's parked in a fifteen-minute zone along the curb. Dean opens the passenger door, and Castiel manages to get himself settled in the seat without any assistance. He tips his head back and closes his eyes, trying to will away the dull ache settling behind his ear. The hospital gave him enough vicodin to tide him over until they can fill his prescription, but he's trying to ration it as much as possible just in case something goes wrong with the insurance.

Dean slides into the seat beside him and starts the engine. “You okay, Cas?”

“I'm fine. I just want to go home.”

“Uh, yeah… about that.”

“What? Dean, what, why aren't we going home?”

Dean rubs the back of his neck nervously “'Cause we got evicted?”

“ _What_?”

“Cas, I'm sorry,” Dean sighs. “I'm so sorry, this is totally all my fault. I went back to get some stuff yesterday and there was a notice on the door. I guess rent was due on Friday, and I didn't pay it. Cas, seriously, I am so fucking sorry.”

“I should have reminded you to pay it.”

“What? No, Cas, you don't get to put this on you, you were in the hospital with a freaking _brain_ injury, I should have been the one to take care of it.”

“I didn't mean that it wasn't your fault,” Castiel answers coldly. “I meant that I should have realized you wouldn't be able to handle things.” Dean colors and looks away from him, but doesn't say anything, just shifts the car out of park and starts to drive. Castiel wants to regret being so harsh, but the anger and disappointment are still too close to the surface. “Is that even legal?” he asks finally, simply because he needs to protest. “We're barely two days late on the payment.”

“It's probably in the lease,” Dean answers, “and even if it's not, that's a pay-by-the-week apartment, Cas, I don't know that we'd have a whole lot of legal ground to stand on. We can't afford to take him to court anyway,” he adds.

“Right.” Can't afford court, can't afford hospital bills, anything to get their lives back on track.

“Cas, we'll figure something else out, it's just an apartment, okay?”

“No,” Castiel answers softly, turning away form him, “it was the only thing I managed to do right.”

They ride in silence for a while, Castiel with his eyes closed, not caring enough to pay attention to where they're heading. He doesn't realize he's drifted off until the car door's opening and Dean's getting back into the driver's seat. “Got your prescriptions,” he says. “You good to drive a bit further, find a motel for the night?”

Castiel nods. He realizes he's known for a while, but he asks anyway. “Katherine gave my job away, didn't she?”

“Yeah.”

Dean puts the car into reverse and they pull out of the parking lot, onto the highway and away from Castiel's failed experiment.

* * *

The motel Dean picks is slightly nicer than their usual fare, a two-story brick building just off I-79 with freshly-painted blue doors and a sign advertising free breakfast. Castiel stumbles getting out of the car, and Dean has his good arm over his shoulders in a matter of seconds. He helps him inside and fusses around him for several minutes—filling a plastic cup with water, screwing the lid off of the vicodin bottle, even making sure the pillows are fluffed or something before Castiel finally convinces him that he's fine, and Dean heads back outside for their things. Which is a pretty small armful: a duffle with a jumbled assortment of clothes (Castiel's not entirely sure which are Dean's and which are his) and a large paper bag of groceries that Dean must have picked up at the drugstore.

Castiel doesn't really pay attention until he hears a muffled clink as Dean sets the bag down by the mini-fridge. He swallows hard when Dean lifts a fifth of whiskey out of the bag, followed up by microwave mac-and-cheese, a couple of bottles of ginger ale, and what looks like a box of tea. Castiel turns his head away, eyes stinging with disappointment. “You're still drinking,” he says flatly.

“Fuck, I—” Dean leaves the groceries and comes over to sit on the edge of Castiel's bed. “I'm gonna quit, Cas, I swear,” he says. “But I'm in deep here, you know that. If I go cold turkey right now, I'm going into withdrawal, and if that happens, I'm useless. I can't drive, I can't take care of you, I can't do anything. I'm not making you look after my fucked-up ass when you're still recovering, okay? That's not happening.” He reaches for Castiel's wrist and grabs it before Castiel can snatch his hand back. “I _will_ quit, Cas,” he promises, squeezing his arm gently. “Listen, I know a guy down in Mississippi who's got an old summer house on the gulf, right up on the beach. He's a hunter and he owes me one, I helped him on a nasty poltergeist case six or seven years back. I already called him and we can crash for as long as it takes you to get back on your feet. So we drive down, two or three days, and then when we get there, I swear, Cas, I will pour everything down the drain and we can ride it out together.”

Castiel stares at him. It's the only logical plan, he has to admit, even though he wishes it didn't require Dean putting off sobriety any longer. He's making promises now, sure, but Castiel's not entirely convinced that once the time comes he won't find yet another reason why he needs to keep drinking. Still, the idea of having a destination in mind other than the next cheap motel suddenly makes everything seem ever so slightly more bearable.

Dean's still looking at him anxiously, and Castiel realizes he hasn't actually said anything. “It'll be good, Cas. Please.”

“Fine.”

Dean breathes a heavy sigh of relief. “Thank you.” He gets up to finish putting things away, still talking anxiously at Castiel. “And I'm not getting drunk, I promise, just enough to keep the edge off, and if it's a problem when we're driving you can tell me to pull over—”

“Dean, it's okay,” Castiel says, and realizes that it almost is. “I'm trying to trust you.” He closes his eyes and leans back against the pillows, listening to Dean shuffle around the room, and waiting for the vicodin he took a few minutes ago to kick in.

Dean stops back by the bed. “You need anything, Cas?”

He looks down at himself. “I should probably shower.”

“Okay. You need, uh—”

“I don't know. Probably, yes.” Castiel squeezes his eyes shut and wishes they didn't have to do this right now, but he can feel the hospital air on him still and it's making him anxious. “Let me see if I can walk to the bathroom on my own, for a start.”

He can, but it's slow and shuffling the whole way, with Dean trying to act like he's not hanging back as close as possible so that he can catch him if he starts to go down. By the time Castiel reaches the door of the bathroom, he's too tired to disguise that he's hanging on the doorframe as if it's the only thing keeping him on his feet.

Dean takes his shoulders and steers him over to sit on the toilet lid. It's cheap, thin plastic and it bends under him. “Just take a minute, Cas, you're doing great,” Dean tells him. He fiddles with the shower knobs while Castiel takes slows, deep breaths and tries to still the spinning in his head.

He can't even get undressed by himself on account of his shoulder. Dean has to help him wriggle out of his over-sized t-shirt one sleeve at a time, while Castiel's face turns an impressive shade of pink, because he's imagined Dean undressing him and this isn't that. Dean says nothing, just waits patiently with his eyes averted while Castiel fumbles with his fly for what must be a full minute. He finally gets his pants off, adjusting them down an inch at a time until he can finally kick them off, and then he's sitting on the toilet in just his boxers, flushed and unaccountably nervous, and shivering slightly despite the steam slowly building in the room.

“There's handles in the shower so you should be okay on your balance,” Dean says, meeting Castiel's gaze with an unreadable expression. “I'll just sit out here, just in case.” He scoots back to give Castiel space to stand up. The shower is indeed fitted with waist-height grab-bars on both walls, and there are industrial-strength rubber grips dotting the floor of the tub. Castiel realizes suddenly that Dean must have planned ahead and gotten them what he can only assume is a room meant to accommodate the elderly. He wants to be angry that he needs things like this, but as he steps easily into the tub he's only grateful that he doesn't have to ask Dean to get into the shower with him.

The water is just this side of too warm, and it melts the tension out of his back and arms, sluicing gently down his bruised chest and over his hips. He's left his boxers on (yet another thing that Dean, thankfully, hasn't commented on), and they cling to him uncomfortably as they become waterlogged.

He loses a little time standing under the hot spray, able to forget for a minute about his tremors and Dean sitting on the other side of the shower curtain and everything uncertain about their lives right now. He finally rouses enough to actually wash himself, but he hits a roadblock with the miniature shampoo bottle. The cap has a small spout that needs to be pried up from inside the lid, and after five tries he hasn't dropped the bottle, but he hasn't managed to get it open either.

He sighs and curses softly. “Dean?”

“What's up?”

He pulls the curtain to the side and holds out the shampoo, instinctively keeping his body angled away from Dean. “I can't open it.”

Dean takes the bottle and easily pops the cap open. Castiel has his hand out to take it back, but Dean either doesn't notice or ignores him, because before Castiel knows what's happening Dean's poured shampoo into his own hand and is gently lathering it through Castiel's hair. His fingers drag easily through the damp strands, working out tangles and snags as they find them, kneading into Castiel's scalp. He's careful around the wound behind Castiel's ear (long, but shallow enough that they'd simply glued it back together like he was a broken figurine), ghosting his fingers over the skin before moving on. Castiel stands frozen, gripping the bar in front of him as he starts to feel light-headed, his knees shaking.

He bites his lower lip.

“Shit,” Dean says, as if he's suddenly realized what he's doing, and Castiel jumps and pulls away. “I, um, wasn't thinking…”

“It's good, I'm fine,” Castiel answers, his voice cracking. “I mean, yes, I'm fine on my own.”

“Uh, right.” Dean slides the shower curtain back into place. “I'll get you a change of clothes from the duffle,” he says hoarsely. “Door's open if, uh… yeah.”

He leaves in a rush, while Castiel stands under the cooling spray and tries to get his breathing back under control. His boxers are tenting slightly despite the heavy drape of the wet fabric, and he shucks them off, leaving them in a corner of the tub as he washes the shampoo out of his hair.

Dean's back with a handful of clothes by the time he turns the water off. Castiel reaches his arm out past the curtain, and there's a towel in his hand almost instantly.

“Do you need anything else?”

“I'm fine.” He keeps saying that. “I can get dressed on my own, Dean.” It'll be difficult, but he's putting his pants on without an audience even if it means he has to sit on the floor like a toddler.

He emerges from the bathroom ten minutes later in grey sweatpants and a soft _Star Wars_ t-shirt about three sizes too big for him. Dean is leaning against the counter by the microwave, the bottle of whiskey sitting open next to him. Castiel walks over slowly and screws the lid back on the bottle, encouraged to see that it's only one or two swallows shy of being full. Dean looks over at him, and Castiel offers him a small smile. “This lid I can manage,” he jokes lamely.

Dean returns his smile, nudges him gently towards the table. “Sit down, food'll be ready in a couple minutes.”

They eat microwave easy-mac in comfortable silence, and Castiel only drops his spoon once.

Afterwards, he brushes his teeth in the kitchenette sink while Dean showers. He's half-asleep by the time Dean finishes, face burrowed in his pillow and a heavy, contented fog pulling him slowly under. He hears Dean shuffle around and turn the TV on, volume just barely audible, and then he's asleep.

* * *

He sleeps light, despite his exhaustion, light enough that a muffled sob from Dean's side of the room is enough to pull him out of sleep entirely. He sits up quickly—too quickly, and he has to put his head between his knees to stop everything from spinning. “Dean?” he calls out once he feels sure he's not going to vomit. “Dean, wake up.”

He doesn't get a response, so he carefully crawls out of bed and settles on the floor by Dean's bed, out of the direct line of fire in case he lashes out. He reaches up a hand to where Dean's twisting under the sheets and grabs his arm. Dean stills instantly and Castiel braces himself, but there's just silence while Dean's breathing slowly returns to normal.

“I'm sorry for all this,” Castiel says softly.

“Jesus, Cas, it's not your fau—” He breaks off, and Castiel waits while he puts the pieces together. “Huh,” he says finally. “Still, not your fault.”

“I feel so useless, though,” Castiel admits quietly. “When this all started there was so little I could do or say, but at least I could fix this. And now that I'm human, anything that I ever thought gave me worth or made me consequential in any way, I lost all of it, all at once.” He feels dangerously close to tears, which is selfish of him. Dean's the one waking from nightmares which aren't even the stuff of his imagination, they're _true_ , but now that he's started on this train of thought he can't make himself stop. “I've never _not_ been able to help you, Dean. I pulled you out of hell and put you back together again, I ought to be able to fix this.”

He's said way too much, he knows that. Dean doesn't respond well to emotional confessions, he doesn't want to hear about how much Castiel needs him, how much he needs to care for him. Despite everything they said back at the hospital they've been dancing around what they are to each other, Castiel no more eager to expose everything he feels than Dean is. But this is as close to a confession of _love_ as he's ever gotten, and he knows Dean can read between the lines and any second now he's going to brush him aside with a joke and close off completely.

Except, Dean doesn't—maybe it's the safety of the darkness or maybe it's something else shifting in him, but he reaches down and puts a hand on Castiel's shoulder. “Cas, you know I don't care about all that, right? Sure, I'd be dead a couple times over if it weren't for you, and all your mojo tricks have been pretty helpful, I won't lie. But you're family, Cas. The fact that you stick around and you've never given up on my stupid ass—that's what I care about, okay?”

Castiel lets himself melt into Dean's touch, and for a moment it's quiet and almost perfect. As close as he thinks they can get to perfect at this point, with Castiel trying to figure out how to keep functioning and Dean still dreaming about his dead brother.

“I should never have said what I did about Sam,” Dean says, as if he can read Castiel's thoughts.

“You were hurting.”

“That's no excuse, though. It can't be, 'cause I don't think it's ever going to stop.” He takes a shaky breath. “I don't blame you, Cas, I don't blame anyone, but what am I supposed to do with knowing he's down there? I mean, it's not like when mom died, or Ellen and Jo, and I feel guilty and it's awful but eventually I can just stop missing them so goddamn much. This is—I mean, he's _there_ , Cas, and he's always going to be there and every time I start remembering and, like, really thinking about what that fucking means it's like I can't breathe and I want to kick the shit out of something just so I can block it all out.” Dean's gripping his shoulder, and Castiel thinks he probably doesn't even realize he's wound himself up so tight, his words spilling out in a blind panic. “How does that get better, Cas?” he asks, frantic. “How does it fucking get better?”

“Dean.” Castiel reaches his good arm awkwardly up to his shoulder to take his hand. “Breathe,” he commands gently, and for the second time tonight, waits for Dean's breathing to level off.

“Jimmy Novak hasn't been in this body for a long time,” he says hesitantly. He's not sure if what he's about to tell Dean is true or not, but to a certain extent he supposes it doesn't matter, since they can never really know. “He was killed, eventually, but it wasn't just that. He was already fading. Human bodies aren't made to hold more than one being, and human souls aren't made to sit unused.

“Archangels are _tremendously_ powerful, Dean. If you had said yes to Michael, your soul wouldn't have just been pushed to the side, he would have burned through you completely—perhaps not immediately, but it wouldn't have taken long. Lucifer is weaker, his Grace was corrupted, but it's not much different.”

“But it was _him,_ Cas,” Dean protests. “He was still here, he knew me, he _jumped._ That wasn't the devil, you know that.”

“Dean, to overpower Lucifer like that would have taken the very last of Sam's strength, the last of—of _him_. I honestly don't believe he would have survived it.”

“So then where is he?”

“I don't think Sam is anywhere,” he answers. “Not everything ends up in heaven or hell, Dean. Some things simply cease to exist.”

Dean doesn't say anything, and from his choked breathing it sounds like he's fighting back tears, but he squeezes Castiel's hand like it's keeping him tethered to the ground, and Castiel lets him. He drifts off to sleep again eventually, still holding Dean's hand, and in the morning when he wakes up, he's back in his own bed.

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

The drive down to Mississippi should only take them one day, but they're in no rush. Or at least, Dean isn't. He's so concerned with making sure that Castiel has enough to eat and fresh air, and worried that the constant motion will make his dizziness worse, that he offers to stop nearly every hour. Castiel would rather they reach their destination and the beginning of Dean's sobriety as quickly as possible, but he has to admit that he enjoys the leisurely pace. Instead of grimy service stations, they stop at highway rest areas with green grass and vacationing young families. Dean insists that they walk around and stretch their legs, and he keeps his hand on the small of Castiel's back just in case his balance falters. They eat lunch at a pancake house in eastern Tennessee and spend the night in a tiny motel just across the Alabama state line.

The air changes the next day as they get closer to the gulf. Castiel can smell the salt long before he can see water, and he rolls down his window to drink it in. Dean grins at the blissed-out look on his face and turns up Zeppelin a little louder.

It's mid-afternoon when they finally arrive at a tiny cottage right on the edge of the dunes. It's built up on tall stilts, with peeling blue-gray paint and a porch with a sagging railing that wraps around the whole house. “Nate said he never got around to fixing up the outside after Katrina,” Dean remarks, “but it's in good shape inside. He stashed a key for us over the door.”

They leave their things in the Impala for the time being and make their way up to the front steps. It's windy, and there's a chill in the air—they missed the Labor Day weekend crowd by a few days, and already the weather's starting to shift from summer into fall. Castiel's shivering by the time they reach the porch. The lock sticks, and Dean swears at it and rattles the door a few times before it finally gives way. The room they walk into is small, about the size of a hotel room, with a couple couches and a TV on one side of the room and a kitchenette on the other. There's wooden panelling on the walls instead of wallpaper, and the carpet is a rust-orange shag. Dean whistles. “Dude hasn't touched the place since the seventies,” he comments. “C'mon, I think there's another room in back.”

There are three more rooms, in fact: a small bedroom in the same color scheme as the front room, a bathroom with a claw-foot tub, and a tiny utility closet with a stacking washer and dryer and a tangled mess of mops and brooms.

Altogether, it's the nicest place either of them has set foot in in months.

“Is this gonna be okay?” Dean asks, concern written across his face as Castiel studies the kitchen appliances more carefully. The refrigerator is surprisingly clean, and contains a foil-covered casserole dish with a note on it: _Feel better soon,_ _xo_ _Elaine._ Possibly Nate's wife or girlfriend.

“It's perfect,” he answers, and Dean practically beams.

“I'll get the stuff from the trunk then.”

It takes one trip for the duffles and one more for the groceries they picked up in town as they were driving in. Castiel arranges orange juice, eggs, cheese, bacon, and hot dogs in the fridge and lines up cereal, coffee, and canned goods on the countertop. He checks the cupboards for food, but finds mostly half-empty boxes of pasta and a staggering amount of microwave popcorn.

He's trying to decide whether he's hungry enough now to try to fix a meal when Dean comes back into the kitchen. He'd been unpacking in the bedroom, and now he's standing on the other side of the counter with the remains of the whiskey and a half-empty bottle of scotch. He puts them on the counter and pushes them towards Castiel. “Pour 'em out, Cas,” he says firmly.

Castiel does, with a little less enthusiasm than he had anticipated. He's remembering that long week when Sam was locked in the panic room at Bobby's, sweating and screaming and hallucinating every monster that existed. He looks at Dean, who's gripping the edge of the counter and watching the liquid spill down the drain with as much hunger in his eyes as Castiel's ever seen him show. When it's done, he grimaces. “Well, here goes nothing.”

Castiel crosses over to him. “Dean, thank you. I mean it.”

“Yeah,” he mutters, like he's not really paying attention, and takes a deep breath. “So, what do you want to do first?”

They end up making a bowl of popcorn and watching reruns of M*A*S*H*, sitting awkwardly on opposite sides of the couch. Castiel realizes during a commercial break that they've never had this lack of purpose before. They've always been together for a specific reason—first there was an apocalypse to stop, then he had to look out for Dean, and then vice versa, and along the way there was always somewhere to travel, a next destination to reach. In a couple of hours he knows Dean will need him again, but right now they're in this strange, unexplored limbo, still too uncertain around each other to know how to behave without a script.

Even so, he thinks, as Dean snorts at something Trapper says and reaches for another handful of popcorn, this is nice. Nothing's chasing them down, the spinning in his head only bothers him when he's moving around now, and Dean will make it through to the other side of this.

“I like this aspect of being human,” he says. Dean gives him a funny look, and he shrugs. “It's peaceful. Heaven was never this peaceful, it's too complex.”

“You like things boring, huh?”

“I'm not bored,” Castiel says softly, and their hands brush as they both reach for the bowl at the same time.

* * *

Dean starts to get jittery a couple of hours later. He flips through channels aimlessly, settling on a station that's halfway through an Indiana Jones movie. By the time the credits start to roll, he's sweating and shivering so hard his teeth chatter.

“Can I get you anything?”

“I'm fine.”

Castiel gets up and pours him a glass of water anyway, and he manages to get it back to the couch without spilling more than a few drops on the carpet. Dean sips at it gingerly and makes a face. “Fuck, Cas, that taste rancid to you?”

Castiel takes a cautious taste. It's regular, clean-tasting water. “It's normal water, Dean, there's nothing wrong with it.”

“Fuck.” He takes another swallow and looks disgusted both with the taste in his mouth and with himself. His left leg is bouncing up and down with nervous energy, and he taps his free hand in a complementary rhythm. “It's fucking freezing in here,” he complains. “Do you want to go for a walk? I want to go for a walk.” He shoots up off the couch and is out the door before Castiel can get to his feet. “Jesus Christ, Cas, come look at this view!”

Castiel follows his voice outside to where the porch wraps around to the back side of the house. He rounds the corner and finds himself suddenly breathless. The ocean rolls out in front of them like an enormous gray slate, thousands of choppy white waves dotting the surface in a constantly shifting pattern. Storm clouds gather along the horizon, stacked on top of each other in dense, ominous layers. He can smell salt and electricity in the air.

Dean's face is radiant, his shaking and chills momentarily forgotten. He grins back at Castiel. “What do you think?”

_Majestic_ is the word in Castiel's head, but it feels somehow too formal and poetic for this moment. “Awesome,” he says instead, and Dean laughs.

“Fuckin' right it is.” He beckons him over. Castie moves carefully, but a spell of dizziness catches him off guard and he weaves to the side, nearly losing his balance entirely. Dean shoots out a hand to pull him in, and rather than simply guide him to the railing, Castiel ends up wrapped in his arms, the peeling paint of the railing scraping his belly and Dean's chest brushing against his back.

He can't breathe, and he doesn't care.

"I haven't been down here since Sammy was at Stanford,” Dean says, his voice a low rumble against Castiel's ear. “I forgot how small the ocean makes you feel. But I guess after you've seen galaxies and shit, this probably doesn't even begin to compare.”

“It's different as a human,” Castiel answers once there's air in his lungs again. “In my angelic form I didn't really have a size—it's easiest to describe the Host as being immensely large, but that doesn't properly capture it. I was eternal, and to a certain extent, I was infinite as well. So yes, as an angel this wouldn't have looked like much, but now, it's like being shrunk down to the size of an ant, and it's overwhelming.”

“So you're saying humans are like insects? Gee, thanks, Cas,” Dean teases.

“Actually, ants are considerably more impressive than humans—they're comparatively much stronger and they can survive underwater for up to twenty-four hours."

“You little shit.”

Dean laughs, but there's a catch in the sound. Castiel turns around to find Dean's face very close to his own, his eyebrows scrunched up in pain. “Dean? Are you alright?”

“Headache.” He winces. “Like, really fuckin' bad, out of nowhere.” He lets his arms fall, and they draw apart. “Maybe hold off on that walk after all?” He's shaking again, and beads of sweat are standing out on his face. Whatever brief respite he was riding has clearly left, and it looks like he's falling hard and fast in its wake.

“It's probably about to storm anyway,” Castiel assures him.

By the time they get back to the front of the house, Castiel is half-supporting Dean, rather than the other way round. They collapse on the couch, and Dean takes a few more sips of water, wiping his sweating face with the back of his hand. A few minutes later, he's off the couch and bolting for the bathroom, where Castiel can hear him emptying his stomach in a series of long, violent heaves. He follows with the water glass, stopping for a moment to prop himself up against the wall and let the buzzing in his head die down.

Dean emerges from the bathroom and leans bonelessly against the door jam. He catches Castiel's eye and laughs mirthlessly at their mirrored poses. “Fuck, Cas, I shouldn't be doing this to you.”

“That might be the stupidest thing you've ever said, and you once asked me if I could play the guitar solo from 'Hotel California' on my harp.”

Dean turns red. “I did not.”

“You may have been concussed at the time,” Castiel allows. He hands the glass to Dean, who takes a long, shuddering swallow. “You should lie down for a bit.”

“Yeah.”

“Couch or bed?”

“Bed. Probably gonna hurl again.” He carefully moves the three feet from the bathroom doorway to the bedroom, one hand over his stomach as if shielding it from any further upset. He settles on the bed with a groan, rubbing at his arm with a twitching hand.

“Is there something you can take for the headache or the nausea?”

“I'll just puke it up again before it does any good.”

He's shivering again, and Castiel looks around the room for a spare blanket. He doesn't see one, but an ancient black boombox on the top shelf of the closet catches his eye. “I'll be back in a minute,” he tells Dean.

In reality, it takes him more like fifteen minutes to find the keys to the Impala, make his way shakily down the steps, and collect as many of Dean's battered tapes as he thinks he can carry in one load. Dean's in the bathroom again when he gets back to the house, but when he stumbles back into the room and sees the cassette tapes spread out across the bed, he smiles weakly. “Thanks, Cas.”

“I didn't know which one you'd want to listen to, so I brought as many as I could.”

Dean runs his fingers through the pile. He settles on one and hands it to Castiel. “Here. _Physical Graffiti_ , second album.”

The boombox speakers have a low buzz that weaves in and out behind the guitars, but Dean doesn't seem to mind. He's still jittery and his skin's gone clammy and pale, but he looks more relaxed with something to focus on other than his desperate desire for a drink. Castiel sits quietly in the armchair beside the bed, letting the music wash over him. Eventually, they both sleep, if only for a little while.

* * *

That afternoon turns out to be the calm before the storm—literally, as well as figuratively, because their lives don't already have enough heavily layered symbolism. When Castiel wakes up, it's dark out and rain is pounding thickly against the sides of the house. Dean's not in the room anymore, and he finds him shaking on the bathroom floor, curled up in a tight ball. "I'm dyin', Cas," he says miserably through chattering teeth.

“You're not dying. I promise, Dean, this will pass.” _In thirty-six hours, give or take_.

“People die from withdrawal, it happens all the time.”

“ _Shut up._ ”

“Just 'cause you don't want to think about it doesn't mean it's not true.” Dean pushes himself up to a sitting position with a groan. “ _Fuck._ I'm a dick, Cas, I'm sorry.”

He knows Dean's going through hell, but he still doesn't feel like accepting the apology. “You need to drink something.”

“Damn right I do.”

“Dean.”

“It's just gonna come up again, Cas. I think I'm puking my fuckin' stomach lining at this point.”

He puts a hand on Dean's forehead and swears. “You're burning up.” He stands, pulling Dean up along with him despite his protests. “Come on, lie down on the couch for a while.”

Castiel finds a dishtowel and soaks it in cold water for Dean's forehead. It seems to bring the fever down some, but he's still shaking almost constantly—not quite a full-blown seizure, but something more than just chills. He gets Dean to drink some ginger ale, but as Dean predicted it all gets thrown up within ten minutes. Eventually he just sits with him and lets Dean squeeze his hand whenever the pain is too much, because he doesn't know what else to do.

They fall asleep again, somehow, but around eleven he wakes up to the sound of Dean ransacking the kitchen. “Salt, Cas,” he responds angrily to Castiel's sleepy inquiry. “There's a fucking ghost jumpin' in and out, where the _hell_ does this bastard keep his rock salt?” He finds a bag eventually and tears it open, spilling the contents around himself in a haphazard circle. “Cas, get your ass over here, _now_!”

“Dean, there isn't any ghost,” he says gently, even though he knows he's not going to believe him. It's hard to convince someone they're hallucinating when they know what kinds of monsters exist.

“Goddammit, Cas, get in the fucking circle and _stay_ in the fucking circle, okay?” Begrudgingly, he lets Dean pull him down onto the linoleum floor next to him, and they sit in a messy pile of salt while Dean shakes and swears and finally forgets where he is.

Two hours later he's searching for silver knives because there's a shape-shifter perched behind the television, and after that he swears up and down that he can hear Sam pounding on the door and begging Dean to let him in. Castiel has to wrestle him to the couch to keep him from running out into the rain. Eventually Dean collapses from exhaustion, but not before he finds about a dozen different ways to tell Castiel that he hates him.

* * *

It gets worse before it gets better, but by the time they've been at the beach house for two full days, Dean can finally keep down liquids and a few crackers. He's still shaky and weak, and he has irritable moods where Castiel is pretty sure he would take his head off with a machete if there was a cold beer in it for him, but they both know he's past the worst of it. It's still raining out—not a storm anymore, but a steady drizzle all the same, so they curl up on the couch under blankets and watch hours of television. Castiel heats up some of the casserole in the microwave, but it's soggy and he can't identify most of the vegetables in it, so they both eat popcorn and chicken-and-rice soup instead. College football is on most of the afternoon, and Dean patiently explains the rules to Castiel. He falls asleep with his head on Castiel's shoulder just before the Bulldogs beat the Wildcats twenty-one to sixteen.

They sleep in late the next morning, Castiel in the bed and Dean sprawled across the couch. By the time they wake up, the rain has finally stopped, so they gather up an armful of blankets and walk down to the shore. The ocean is glassy and colorless, reflecting a still-overcast sky. An old sea wall half-buried by sand drifts sits about fifty feet from the edge of the water. Dean spreads out one of the blankets over the white-washed concrete and they settle on it side by side, the other blankets wrapped around their shoulders.

“I wish it was warmer,” Dean says discontentedly. “That was kind of the whole point, coming down here for some sunshine so you could get better. And to go swimming. Fuck, I don't think I've gone swimming since I was in high school.”

“You'd have to go on your own anyway. I don't know how to swim.”

“Doesn't matter so much in the ocean. Half the fun's just standing near the shore and letting the waves knock you over.”

Castiel wrinkles his nose. “I don't understand your idea of 'fun.'”

“No, it's great,” Dean insists. “It's like a rollercoaster—”

“—exactly—”

“—you can lose control for a second but you're still gonna land fine,” he finishes. “Also, you're an ass.”

“Mm-hm,” Castiel responds contentedly. He pulls the blanket cocoon tighter around himself and tips his face up to the sky. The clouds are thinning out and he can feel the heat from the sun brushing against his skin. He closes his eyes, and thinks that he's almost afraid to admit to himself how entirely perfect this moment in time is, because his track record with humanity hasn't held a lot of perfection so far and he's afraid that once he names this for what it is the bubble will burst, and he doesn't want to try to imagine what will be left behind.

Dean jostles his shoulder. “Just because it's too cold for a swim doesn't mean you're not sticking your feet in the water at least.”

He groans, but Dean ignores him. “Not up for discussion, angel,” he says, and if he notices the slip-up he doesn't admit to it. He's already toeing off his shoes, and there's such an eager look on his face that Castiel can't help but sigh and follow suit. “You're not gonna spend a couple of weeks next to the ocean and never even touch it. Not on my watch anyway.”

He's on his feet and shifting impatiently from side to side while he waits for Castiel to carefully fold his socks together and stuff them into a shoe. “Fastidious little bastard,” he gripes, and Castiel tells him to save it for when he comes back to find his socks blown away by the wind and gone forever. He stands shakily, wrapping the blanket tighter around himself, and Dean grabs his elbow to steady him. “C'mon.”

The sand nearer water's edge is firm, almost so much so that they don't leave footprints, but right where the ocean meets the land it starts to melt away under their feet without warning. They stop to roll the bottoms of their sweatpants up to their knees, Dean holding onto Castiel's shoulders to steady him as he leans over.

The first wave over their feet is icy and Dean swears in shock, then grins and pulls Castiel further into the water. “This counts,” Castiel proclaims stubbornly once he's ankle-deep, his teeth chattering but a smile pulling at his lips regardless.

“Like hell it does,” Dean laughs at him. “You'll get used to it, come on.”

“If by 'get used to it' you mean my feet are so numb I can't feel them anymore, then yes,” he says, but he follows him a few steps further anyway. Dean's nearly up to his knees already, smiling into the wind and looking genuinely, uncomplicatedly happy for the first time that Castiel can remember.

“Get over here, Cas!”

“I'm going to lose my balance,” he protests, as a larger wave hits and nearly proves him right.

Dean turns and takes him by the shoulders. “Cas, I'm not gonna let you fall,” he says, and then his lips are on Castiel's and he's kissing him. It's determined and simple and over before Castiel has time to react, but it doesn't feel like an accident, and he lets Dean grab his hand and pull him further into the ocean.

* * *

They're both soaked and covered in sand by the time they make their way back to the house. “Get in the shower and warm up,” Dean says, pushing Castiel towards the bathroom. “If you get pneumonia, I know you're gonna blame it on me.”

He sits at the bottom of the tub instead of standing, still too wary of his balance to risk falling and breaking his head open again, and he almost drifts off to sleep under the hot spray of the shower. He emerges from the bathroom feeling boneless and light-headed, but it feels like safety and contentment for a change, rather than some side-effect from his injury. He dresses in another pair of Dean's cast-off sweats (they might be Sam's, he's not sure, but either way he would never have guessed that the Winchesters owned so many comfy clothes) and heads into the kitchen to make a mug of tea while Dean's in the shower.

He's leaning against the counter waiting for the water to boil when Dean comes in, running a hand through his damp hair. “Hey,” he says gruffly, not quite catching Castiel's eye, as if awkwardness about the kiss earlier has finally caught up with him.

“Tea?” he asks, and Dean nods. Castiel's noticed that he hasn't turned down a single drink these past few days, and wonders if having something, anything, in his hand helps to distract him from the alcohol he's still craving.

“Water will be hot in a few minutes,” he says as Dean settles next to him along the counter.

“Okay.”

There's tension in his shoulders, and without thinking Castiel reaches out and runs a hand down his arm. “Dean, this afternoon…”

“Fuck, Cas, can we just—” he breaks off, frustrated.

“Just what?”

Dean turns in a fluid motion and kisses him again, and okay, yes, Castiel can happily just do this, and he tries to communicate exactly that through his lips. He tightens his grip on Dean's arm and makes a move to pull them closer together, but Dean abruptly breaks the kiss and draws back, his face flushed. “Fuck. _Fuck_ ,” he mutters.

“Dean—” he starts to ask, but a shriek from the kettle interrupts him and they both jump. Dean grabs the kettle and nods in the direction of the couch. “Go sit down,” he says hoarsely, “I'll bring 'em over.”

They settle on the couch awkwardly, Dean clearly hoping he can extend this reprieve for as long as possible, but Castiel is having none of it. “You need to tell me what's going on,” he demands as soon as Dean sits down.

“I know.” Dean stares at the mugs sitting side-by-side on the coffee table rather than making eye contact with Castiel. “Shit. I wanted to be a fucking adult about this.”

“Talking about your feelings is not childish, Dean.”

“I know that, okay? Jesus, I'm not actually as emotionally constipated as people seem to think I am.” He lifts a shaking hand. “ _This_ is what I wanted to avoid, this overthinking everything and freaking out part.”

“You're nervous about us being together,” Castiel says slowly, leaving it almost a question but not quite.

“The thing is, I'm _not_ , Cas. At least not about, I don't know, commitment or some sort of big gay panic that Sam always seemed to think I was on the verge of having. I've spent a lot of time being dumb and a lot of time being scared, and I'm not either of those things now. I know what I want,” he says, and looks directly at Castiel. “I just… I hurt you, Cas, you know I did, and it doesn't feel right to just act like I can have everything I want after that. No, shut up, let me say this,” he insists when Castiel tries to protest. “I spent three months so shit-faced I didn't even realize you'd _fallen_ , Cas. I mean, how fucked up is that? And I'm a jackass, too, because you know what I thought of first when I realized you were human? I felt disappointed that I'd missed it, like, I mean I felt bad for _myself_.I don't know, but I guess ever since I knew that it was how things were going to go down for you, I wanted to be there for you when it happened. I know you probably hate it but there's a lot of great stuff about being a human, Cas, and I wanted to be the one to show you all of that. _God_ , I'm sorry, that's stupid, I know, but—”

Castiel leans in and kisses him hard, full and open-mouthed. Dean makes a startled sort of sound in his throat, and then he's kissing back, matching Castiel move for move. Castiel threads a hand behind Dean's neck to draw him closer. He kisses him as deeply and thoroughly as he knows how, and when he finally comes up for air, heart pounding, he presses his forehead against Dean's, their stuttering breaths loud in his ears. “Don't try to act like you're the only one who wants this,” he growls, “and don't you _dare_ try to keep me at arm's length out of some misplaced, idiotic martyrdom complex.” He draws back slightly and stares Dean down. “Can you get that through your thick skull, Dean Winchester, or do I need to say it again?”

“Fuck,” Dean breathes in response, and pulls Castiel in, crushing their bodies together and kissing him as if there's nothing left in the world.

Castiel melts into him, and for a long while everything is just mouths and arms and heat and friction. _I've waited so long for this,_ is all Castiel can think. _So goddamn long._ And yes it was worth it, yes he'd do it again in a heartbeat, but for now he's making up for lost time with a vengeance. Dean snakes a hand up under his t-shirt, and Castiel responds by grinding down in a way that has Dean gasping into his mouth. He grins and tries to repeat the movement, but Dean catches him off guard and suddenly flips them so that Castiel is lying breathless on his back.

He expects Dean to move fast and hard, but instead he changes gears, slowly, meticulously taking Castiel apart with his hands and mouth and voice until Castiel is trembling underneath him. He bites his lip and tries to keep it all in, but Dean kisses along his jaw and whispers, “Relax, angel, I've got you,” and he comes with a muffled cry that he can't hold back.

Dean kisses him through it, tangling the fingers of his free hand with Castiel's own. When he can finally move again, Castiel sits up, pushing Dean back against the couch with a kiss and working his hands down to the waistband of his pants. Dean freezes up and tries to block him with his forearm, muttering, “It's fine, Cas, seriously,” but Castiel is insistent.

“Please, Dean,” he murmurs, catching his wrist with his hand. “Let me do this.” Dean reddens and closes his eyes. “Let me take care of you, Dean, please.”

Dean breathes out a ragged curse and relaxes against him with a shudder, and Castiel smiles into their kiss and starts to work his way down his body, inch by inch, pressing forgiveness and need and _I promise I_ _am_ _staying with_ _you_ into every touch.


	10. Chapter 10

 

“What do you miss the most?” Dean asks.

They're lying in bed together, Castiel tucked in against Dean's side, his head resting on his arm just below the handprint seared on his shoulder. It's light out—it's been light out for a while, but first Castiel was too sleepy to get up, and then they were decidedly not sleepy, and afterwards Dean held out his arm for Castiel with a look that said he didn't want to hear anything about it, and that's how they end up snuggled under the sheets at eleven-thirty in the morning.

Castiel traces invisible lines across Dean's chest and considers his question. The real answer is on the tip of his tongue immediately, but it feels somehow too intimate for this moment. It's irrational, he supposes, given that ten minutes ago Dean was buried inside him and gasping his name. There's no reason why that should feel easier than admitting that he still feels fundamentally crippled without his wings, that he knows his body is mangled and deformed even if no one else can tell the difference.

“My brothers and sisters,” he says instead, because it's not a complete lie.

“Even though they were dicks?”

“You met a lot of the worst of them,” Castiel concedes. “But Anna and I were very close, and Gabriel had his moments when we were younger.”

“Okay, Anna started out nice enough I guess, but aren't you forgetting about the part where she tried to ice most of my family?”

“That wasn't her,” Castiel whispers, “not anymore. Hell doesn't have a monopoly on torture, Dean.”

Dean falls awkwardly silent, but he tightens his arm around Castiel's shoulder, and it feels like he's trying to comfort both of them.

“Anyway, it's not so much any one of them in particular,” Castiel continues. “It was having family. Belonging to something more important than just myself. I feel empty sometimes without it.”

Dean nods. “I get that,” he says slowly. Then, “Fuck, I sure know how to kill a mood, huh?”

“It was a fair question, Dean. It's not as if either of us can pretend the past just doesn't exist. Besides,” he adds, pulling away from Dean so that he can prop himself up on one elbow and look at him properly, “the present is very, _very_ good. I think it can withstand a little shaking.”

Dean grins and leans in towards him, and they share a lazy kiss. It goes on for several minutes, to the point that Castiel's starting to think they might go a second round, when his stomach growls loudly and Dean starts to laugh. “Breakfast?”

“Please.”

“Good.” Dean gets in one last kiss and winks at him. “We can always come back to this later.”

They gather up boxers and t-shirts from where they landed on the floor the night before and head into the kitchen. Castiel starts the coffee and munches on a handful of cereal while Dean cracks a slightly alarming number of eggs into a bowl and scrambles them with a fork. They eat sitting cross-legged on the couch, making faces at each other over their coffee and grinning like a couple of idiots. There's sunlight streaming through the kitchen window—it's a beautiful day out, maybe even properly warm for once, and Dean wants to teach him how to swim. Castiel counters that they need to find sunscreen if they're going to be outside much more, or Dean will roast. He's already got splashes of red across his nose and cheekbones—and somehow, impossibly, even _more_ freckles—from yesterday alone.

Dean rolls his eyes. “So I'll sunburn a little, so what?”

“You'll care when you're dying from skin cancer thirty years from now, and don't expect me to be sorry when it happens.”

Dean gives him a funny look. “Of all the ways I've ever imagined dying, that's not one of them,” he says. He's not quite smiling but there's a lightness behind his eyes, and Castiel feels like it should be morbidly wrong for someone to look so excited about the prospect of dying from cancer, but they both know it isn't. If Dean makes it to his sixties it'll be the miracle none of them ever saw coming.

“I'm still looking for sunscreen,” he says petulantly, and leaves Dean to clean up the dishes.

* * *

The water is cold and Castiel gets far more of it up his nose than he ever wanted, but by the end of the afternoon he can do a passable front crawl. Dean's beaming like a kid at Christmas, although Castiel suspects it's less out of pride for Castiel's accomplishments and more because he managed to find an activity which let him keep his hands on Castiel's body for most of the day.

They lie out in the sun until the clouds roll in and Castiel starts to shiver, so they scoop up their things and head back to the house. When they get inside, there's a noise coming from the living room, a buzzing sound that takes Castiel a few moments to recognize as Dean's phone. He's surprised it's even charged and lying out; he's pretty sure his phone is sitting in the glove box of the Impala. Dean scoops it up and makes a puzzled face at the caller ID. “Hello?”

Castiel leaves him in the living room and tries to shake the worst of the sand out of his hair and into the tub. He's too tired right now to take a proper shower. All he wants to do is curl up on the couch with Dean and fall asleep. He wonders when he became so lazy, if he'll ever go back to working an actual job or if he'll let Dean talk him into living off of credit card scams. Or maybe Dean will want to work, now that he's not numbing the empty days with alcohol. Maybe they'll get another apartment, or a house eventually. They can get a cat—or a dog; they'll probably fight over which one. He knows he's getting ahead of himself, but for the first time he can let himself daydream about these things and it doesn't feel like a pointless exercise. This is actually happening, finally.

He changes and walks back to the living room, where Dean is standing frozen by the kitchen counter, staring at the phone in his hand. He looks up when he hears Castiel. “That was Jody,” he says simply. “Bobby's dead.”

There's a ringing sensation in his ears, a muffled _pop_ as everything else drains away. His heart is clenching, and he's gasping, and playing over and over and over again across his mind is: _it's my fault, it's my fault, it's my fault, it's my fault—_

Dean's grabbing him by the shoulders, catching him as his legs give way, and they sink to their knees together. “Cas? Cas, what are you talking about?”

“It's my fault,” Castiel says again, his voice raw. “It's my fault, Dean, the last thing he said to me—he never wanted me to bring him back.”

“Cas, no, it's not your fault—Cas!” He's still protesting, still mumbling his sin as if it can somehow absolve him. Dean shakes him once, firmly. “Cas, listen to me. It was a heart attack. Bobby died of a _heart attack_ , okay?”

Regret hits him so quickly there's no space for relief. “But Dean, we never—”

Dean swallows, his eyes glassy. “I know, Cas,” he says, and wraps his arms around him, rocking him gently. “I know.”

They stay like that for a long while.

* * *

They pack up the Impala and leave that night. It's an eighteen-hour drive, but Dean insists that he doesn't feel like sleeping right now anyway, so they gather their few things and head north. They drive in silence for a while, Castiel unable to think of anything to say that won't sound hollow and out-of-place, Dean tight-lipped and calm. After an hour or so of driving they stop for gas and coffee, and then they're right back on the road again.

Castiel tries not to, but he drifts off to sleep not long after that. When he wakes up, the car's no longer moving. At first he thinks that Dean's pulled off the road to take a quick nap, but when he looks around he realizes that they're parked next to a bar, the neon signs in the window casting a purplish glow over the car.

Dean's sitting next to him, very much awake and clenching his hands so tight around the steering wheel, Castiel can hear the leather squeak. He's breathing heavily, deep, ragged breaths that shake his shoulders. Castiel puts a hand on his arm, and Dean shakes his head. “I didn't go in,” he says quietly, not looking at him.

“I know.”

“I can't—fuck, Cas, I'm not ready for this.” His voice breaks. “I talked with him nine days ago, when you were still in the hospital. He told me I was a moron and that if you'd put up with my sorry ass for this long, I'd better fucking do right by you. I promised him we'd come visit once you were on your feet again, and now—” he chokes on a sob and slams his hand open-palmed on the steering wheel. “God, I need a drink, I need a drink so _fucking_ bad.”

Castiel grabs his hand and Dean collapses into him without any prompting, burying his face in Castiel's neck and sobbing. Castiel wraps his arms around him and lets him cry, whispering stupid things that he knows aren't really true, but he says them anyway in case they're what Dean needs to hear.

* * *

Jody meets them at Bobby's place. If she's surprised at seeing Dean show up with a strange man, she doesn't show it. She wraps Dean in a wordless hug and shakes Castiel's hand solemnly. “It's good to see you again, Dean, even if I wish it were for a different reason.”

“Where is he?” Dean asks, his voice tight.

“Coroner's. I told them to hold off a day or so in case you wanted to pay your respects.” She leads them into the house, and they settle awkwardly on the couch in Bobby's study. His desk is nearly empty of clutter, and Castiel can tell from the dust gathered on its surface that it's been that way for some time.

“Dean, it was the best possible thing, the way he went,” Jody's saying. “I'd been on duty late the night before, and he was supposed to buy me breakfast that morning. When he didn't show, I came over to check on him. Found him in his bed.” She puts a hand on Dean's knee. “Doc said he went in his sleep, wouldn't have felt a thing.”

She's trying to help and Dean's trying to act like it's working, but Castiel can see the fine tremors in his arms, so he reaches out and gently takes his hand. Dean squeezes back, and Jody does them the courtesy of ignoring their moment. She reaches into her uniform jacket and pulls out a handful of well-folded papers. “I don't know if you're ready for this or not, but I need to give you these anyway,” she says, and hands them to Dean. “It's Bobby's will. He left everything to you.”

Dean swallows hard and clutches at the papers, crumpling them in his fist. He opens his mouth to try to say something and snaps it shut again on what would have been a sob, closing his eyes tightly and rocking back and forth.

“Jody, thank you,” Castiel says sincerely. “Could you give us a moment alone?”

She leaves quietly, and when she's gone Castiel eases the papers gently out of Dean's hand. He puts them to the side and lays his hand on the side of Dean's face. “Breathe,” he instructs softly. “It's alright, Dean, just breathe.”

He does, and eventually it calms him down and he can relax into Castiel, pressing his face into the collar of his coat.

“Dean, what should I tell Jody about the body? Do you want to go see him?”

“Yeah,” he croaks, and straightens up. He drags a hand across his eyes and takes a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah, I owe him that.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“Please,” he says, and squeezes his hand. “Bobby'd want you there anyway.” His eyes fall on the papers beside him on the couch, and he shakes his head. “That old bastard.”

“You don't have to decide anything right now,” Castiel assures him.

“I know.” Dean gives him a long look and leans in for a quiet kiss. “Thank you,” he murmurs when he pulls away. He sets his jaw and stands, pulling Castiel along with him. “Let's get this over and done.”

* * *

Bobby is cremated that afternoon, and in the evening they take his ashes and scatter them in the field behind the salvage yard. “I don't think he would have wanted to be any place in particular,” Dean says. “There's nothing good that comes from a spirit getting too attached to one spot, Bobby knew that.”

They're standing in the tall grass with the empty cardboard box lying on the ground in front of them. Castiel has his arm around Dean's waist. He's still a little in shock at how small the box with Bobby's remains had been, and realizing, _really_ realizing, perhaps for the first time, that this will be his fate, too. At the end of the day, everything that's left of him will be able to fit inside a shoe box. It angers him, because he feels there's more to him than that, and he wonders if this is why humanity fears death—not because it's unknown, but because it uncovers the lies they tell themselves.

Dean carries the box with them back to the salvage yard and burns it on a patch of clear dirt. He scuffs the ashes into the ground with his boot. “Doesn't feel right to just toss it in a dumpster.”

Jody left a pan of macaroni and cheese on the kitchen table for them, and Castiel wonders how they became the kind of people who had other people bring them covered dishes. Neither of them are hungry, though, so they put it in the fridge for later. They still haven't talked about the will and what they're going to do at this point—they've just been moving on autopilot from one task to the next until Bobby was properly put to rest.

He tries to bring it up gently, but Dean brushes him off. “I just want to sleep, Cas,” he tells him. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

* * *

They don't talk about it the next day, though. They wake up late, reheat mac and cheese for lunch, and wander around the salvage yard, Dean pointing out which cars he would rebuild and which ones he would dismantle for parts. They fall asleep on the downstairs couch again, the TV playing reruns of _Bonanza_ on mute, and Dean sleeps through his nightmares.

The day after that Dean decides the Impala's engine needs a tune-up, and the day after that he wants to rotate the wheels and wax her, and in the end they spend the rest of the week there, cautiously living on the surface of what's left of Bobby's life, too hesitant to move anything around or make any commitments lest they accidentally put down roots.

Saturday morning they wake well before noon to a knock on the front door. Jody's standing on the porch dressed in jeans and an old t-shirt from a 10k, trash bags and a bucket of cleaning supplies in her hands. She stares Dean down as he mumbles a sleepy hello and rubs his eyes.

“I'm spending my day off on you clowns, so you'd better invite me in and there'd better be coffee in my hands in five minutes,” she tells him.

Dean high-tails it to the kitchen. “Fresh coffee,” Jody calls after him. “Don't you even think about reheating whatever's left in that pot.” Castiel hears Dean swear colorfully and start rummaging in the cupboards for a clean mug.

Jody settles in the armchair across from the couch, where Castiel's still sitting with the blanket on his lap and trying not to look like he just woke up. She gives him a soft smile and tosses her head in the direction of the kitchen. “How's he doing?”

“He's alright,” Castiel answers truthfully. “As well as I would expect, given the circumstances.”

“And you?”

He's touched that she asks. “I'm fine. We'll get through it.”

Jody nods. “You will. I'm glad he has you,” she adds. “When Bobby found out you'd stayed with him… well, I don't think I've ever seen him so grateful.” She smiles. “You know, he told me that Dean was never going to get his head out of his ass long enough to realize what he had, but it looks like he was wrong.”

Castiel can feel tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. He blinks them away. “Thank you,” he says softly.

Dean comes back carrying three mugs of coffee, two black and one with creamer in it for Castiel. He settles next to him on the couch and glares at Jody. “You want to explain why you had to wake us up at the crack of dawn?”

“You need to clean,” she answers. “There's piles of shit all over this house, and you can't just leave them there and tiptoe around them forever.”

“Yeah, well who said anything about us staying?”

“You haven't left yet,” she shoots back. “Besides, it doesn't matter. If you don't want to stay, you don't have to stay, but you need to sort through his things and put this place in order.”

“Why?”

“Because that's what children do when their parents die,” Jody snaps, and that shuts Dean up. “Look, I know it's not easy,” she adds, more gently this time. “My mom passed away last year, and trying to sort through all her things was hell. But he didn't leave everything to you so you could turn this place into a mausoleum. He wanted you to have it, Dean, so that means you roll up your sleeves and you throw out his old clothes and papers and the shaving cream in the bathroom.” She pushes the box of garbage bags across the floor until they rest by his feet. “Take it one room at a time. It'll get better, I promise.”

Jody puts her mug to the side and stands. “I've got a mop and a bucket to grab from the car. I've only got until four, so finish up your coffee and let's get moving.”

It's quiet when she leaves. Castiel leans into Dean, resting his head on his shoulder and swallowing a yawn. After a minute, Dean clears his throat. “I suppose we might as well stay through the winter at least,” he says. “All the salt on the highways fucks up Baby's chassis.”

“We should avoid that, yes.”

“Is that okay?” Dean asks, suddenly unsure of himself.

Castiel smiles up at him. “If you're staying, I'm staying,” he says simply, and so they do.


	11. Epilogue

 

There's sunlight streaming in through the window when he wakes—a rarity, since it's been cloudy and overcast for what feels like weeks now. Castiel stretches lazily on the bed, rolling his shoulders to try to relieve the stiffness in his neck. It's cold, despite the sunshine, and with a little exploration he realizes that it's at least in part because the other side of the bed is empty.

He pushes himself up on his elbows, looking around for the clock and squinting at the fuzzy red numbers. It doesn't feel like he's slept in that late, but then he might not have—Dean is up at all hours, with little rhyme or reason. Castiel's the heavy sleeper. He rubs his eyes, gives his head a quick shake to try to clear up the buzzing. Some days he's completely fine, and other days he gets dizzy just climbing the stairs or standing up for too long. He's given up trying to keep track of which kind of day is more frequent or whether the better days are starting to outnumber the bad. Knowing whether he's getting better or worse won't change it happening.

The door opens and Dean walks quietly back into the room. “Hey,” he says, sliding into bed next to Castiel.

“Couldn't sleep?”

“I got a little,” Dean answers, nestling backwards into Castiel's arms. “Woke up a couple of hours ago and figured I'd move downstairs so I wouldn't bother you.” He takes Castiel's hand, weaves their fingers together and tucks them in to his chest. “Then I got lonely.”

“Sap.”

“Oh, shut up.” Castiel grins sleepily in response and tightens his arms around him.

When he holds Dean, it's amazing, but it's not perfect, it's not everything he's ever wanted. Because he had wanted to wrap his wings around him, enfold the hunter in interdimensional, kaleidoscopic light. He had _ached_ with it, and even now, with his Grace some five months gone, it's no different. It tugs at him, like a thought caught on the tip of his tongue. _I had so much more I could have given you_.

“Hey.” Dean breaks his thoughts. “You okay?”

“I'm fine, why?”

“I dunno, you got kind of quiet all of a sudden.” He turns and settles so that he's facing Castiel, studies him carefully. “How's the brain today?”

“Fuzzy,” Castiel answers. “Just a little.”

Dean kisses him softly. “A little fuzzy we can deal with,” he says, which is what he always says. Then he grins. “You know, it snowed last night.”

“What?” Castiel rolls away from him and leans over to the window. They're sleeping in the back bedroom, the one that Dean usually stayed in when he visited Bobby in the past. Both of them had agreed to leave the master bedroom empty—Castiel had protested at first, simply because it was more central to the rest of the house and therefore easier to heat, but Dean had reddened and bluntly admitted that he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to get it up if they were sleeping in Bobby's old bed, and that settled the matter. This room is snug, but they don't have much, and the window by the bed looks out onto the field behind the house, acres of tall grass which, this morning, are dusted with a fine layer of snow.

Dean sits up behind him and settles his chin on Castiel's shoulder. “It won't last too long with the sun as bright as it is.”

“Then we better get dressed fast,” Castiel replies.

They bundle up in sweatpants and flannel shirts, which seem to be eighty percent of their wardrobe these days. Dean switches to jeans when he works—he's continuing Bobby's repair work, a job that was practically forced on him when Bobby's old customers kept coming to the yard without invitation. Castiel suspects that Jody had something to do with that, and he's thankful to her, because working on the cars gives Dean purpose and keeps him from going crazy with boredom (or worse, Castiel thinks, throwing himself back into hunting or booze).

Dean's staunchly refused to let Castiel try to find a job, which he can actually do despite Castiel's best efforts, since the Impala is the only transportation they have. Hunters have continued to call Bobby's place, though, and while they've had to turn most of them away, a few have needed help with translations or other research that Castiel is actually able to do. So he's kept busy after all, even though he works from the kitchen table most of the time. He's hoping that he can find some way to get in touch with a local university and do some freelance translation for an actual paycheck. Not that they really need the money—Bobby left them a nest egg sizable enough that neither of them feel comfortable acknowledging its existence.

Downstairs, they stumble into winter boots and jackets. Dean pulls a knit hat down over Castiel's head and laughs when he protests. “You're adorable, you know that?”

Castiel glares. “I used to be able to rip demons from their hosts with a touch.”

“Yeah, well, now you've got a hat with earflaps.” Dean pushes the door open.

“I hate you,” Castiel complains as he follows him out onto the porch.

The snow crunches under their feet like tiny shards of glass. Castiel reaches down and drags his fingers through it, flakes catching on his skin and melting instantaneously. He looks up to see Dean standing and watching him, hands shoved deep in his pockets and a stupid grin on his face. “What?” Castiel demands, straightening up.

“Nothin'.” Dean just smiles wider and kisses him solidly.

Castiel pulls back as far as Dean's hold will let him. “You're in a good mood today.”

“I am,” Dean agrees. “I'm fucking happy, Cas. I don't know, I just am.”

He kisses him back. “Good.”

* * *

Dean wants pancakes for breakfast, Castiel insists that it's already late and they're going to be eating so much more later in the day, and somehow the result of this disagreement is that they end up eating slices of the pie Jody brought over the day before. “Pumpkin's a fruit,” Dean says with him mouth full.

“Vegetable,” Castiel counters. “I can't believe you talked me into eating pie for breakfast.”

“We're getting fat,” Dean agrees, which is almost true. It's amazing what plenty of food and living in one place will do. “I need to get some exercise, get rid of this gut.”

Castiel raises an eyebrow and looks innocently at his plate. “I think we get plenty of exercise.” Dean kicks him under the table.

They rinse the turkey and put it in the oven, and then head upstairs to trade lazy blowjobs in the shower. By the time they make their way back downstairs, the smell of roasting meat is starting to fill the house. Dean pulls onions, potatoes, celery, and mushrooms out of the refrigerator and takes down a cutting board. Castiel flips through Bobby's old record collection and puts on a Bob Dylan album. Dean rolls his eyes but hums along good-naturedly. He thinks Dylan is pretentious, but Castiel insists that hard rock is not actually an appropriate soundtrack for every occasion, an opinion which Dean fiercely disagrees with.

The stuffing is from a box, but the potatoes are real, and they have a bag of frozen green beans and some baby carrots to serve on the side. Jody invited them to her place for the holiday, but they had declined politely. There will be other years and other holidays to celebrate with friends, but Castiel is selfish and wants their first Thanksgiving to himself.

He's mashing potatoes (his hands are shaking too much today for him to handle a knife), swaying gently to the music, when he catches Dean staring at him again, a funny look on his face. He's about to ask him what's going on when Dean suddenly and very simply says, “I love you.”

Castiel freezes, his eyes wide, and Dean's face falls. “Shit. Cas, should I not have—”

“Dean, shut up.” Castiel circles around to the other side of the counter and pulls Dean in for a kiss. “I've been in love with you for _years_ , idiot. I just didn't think you'd want to hear me say it.”

Dean rolls his eyes. “Well, fuck that—”

“I love you.”

“Yeah.” Dean tightens his arms around him and kisses him again. “You can say that as often as you want.”

They clear off the table in the dining room to eat. It's a ridiculous amount of food for just the two of them, but Dean assures him that leftovers are the best part of Thanksgiving anyway. They're too full and lazy to deal with the dishes right away, so they sprawl on the couch in the living room instead. _Rudy_ is playing on the TV, and they both doze off somewhere before the end, but it doesn't matter.

It's a hazy twilight when they wake up, Castiel's head buried in the crook of Dean's arm. It's started snowing lightly again. Dean yawns and stretches. “It's definitely time for pie now, right?”

“We have dishes to do,” Castiel reminds him.

“Fuck.” Dean closes his eyes and fakes a snore. “Never mind, I'm sleepy again after all.”

Eventually he lets Castiel drag him off the couch, and they start packing food away in tupperware containers, the sink overflowing with dishes. Dean washes and Castiel dries, and they make efficient work of everything until some inadvertent splashing leads to a soap-suds war which leads to Castiel pressing Dean up against the counter, locked in a deep kiss, their soap-damp shirts sliding together and hands tight around each other's hips.

When they finally get back to cleaning up, it's mostly a few pots that need to soak and the now-mangled turkey carcass sitting on the cutting board. Dean fishes around in it and pulls out the wishbone. “Tradition, Cas,” he says, holding the other end out to him. “Make a wish.”

He does, and they pull on the ends of the fragile bone, and Castiel knows it doesn't matter which end breaks larger because they're both thinking the same thing.

 

_fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read and commented--I've loved working on this story, and writing for you beautiful people is truly the best :)
> 
> And if this epilogue wasn't already sappy enough for you, go listen to "Buckets of Rain" (from the album Cas puts on): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6v5HrfeeV8.


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